tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76918186177787222332018-08-11T10:52:10.396-04:00Iglesia Descalzaa voice from the margins of the Catholic ChurchRebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.comBlogger1734125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-58998521754806899252018-08-07T13:19:00.001-04:002018-08-07T13:25:24.972-04:00"I am Agustina Gamboa and I will no longer keep silent"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u_7s-W7BMlE/W2nRZZBSlTI/AAAAAAAALQA/JAc84FRBEnErljlM-_pitr3OYz3__yKYgCLcBGAs/s1600/AgustinaGamboaArias.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="740" height="130" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u_7s-W7BMlE/W2nRZZBSlTI/AAAAAAAALQA/JAc84FRBEnErljlM-_pitr3OYz3__yKYgCLcBGAs/s200/AgustinaGamboaArias.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Fathers and teenage daughters at loggerheads over a political issue isn't news. Imagine if the father in question is a prominent priest in the archdiocese who holds traditional views on reproductive rights and you, his daughter and guilty secret, are a feminist. Agustina Maria Gamboa Arias, <a href="https://www.lanacion.com.ar/2157745-su-papa-es-un-conocido-cura-de-salta-y-ella-asegura-que-la-abandono-e-intenta-ocultarla">did not reveal</a> her biological father's identity for 18 years, but when she saw Fr. Carlos Gamboa, a member of the Archdiocese of Salta, Argentina, on the TV program <i>La Otra Campana</i> speaking out against the bill to legalize abortion that her nation's government is considering, she knew she could no longer keep silent. On July 29th, Gamboa Arias issued the following statement on her <a href="https://www.facebook.com/agustina.gamboa.7/posts/1781235008640234">Facebook</a> page, revealing her father's identity, his past actions, and her opposition to his views:<br /><br /><i>"Priest and point of reference of the Catholic Church of Salta Carlos Gamboa was interviewed on the program "La Otra Campana" about the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Act to be dealt with soon in the nation's Senate. On the occasion, Carlos Gamboa appealed to the slogans "Yes to life", "Yes to all life", "All life is worthy." Those were his statements. However, reality contradicts his words since he has systematically neglected and disregarded me, his daughter Agustina María Gamboa Arias, born in May 2000.<br /><br /> I bear the last name of my progenitor, but originally I was noted in the Public Registry as Agustina Arias since he refused to acknowledge me legally, denying me also the right of every boy and girl to their identity. On August 16, 2002, at the behest of a lawyer, I was able to be recognized as is recorded in the annotation on the margin of my birth certificate. Even though I am alive, if it were for him I would be in complete abandonment.<br /><br />I have always known everything about my identity, who I am and where I come from, but this reality was inconclusive. As I grew up I needed not only to know it but also to understand what was happening. Why was my father absent?<br /><br /> In the interview in which he appeared, Gamboa talks about "accompanying the woman who is in the dilemma of continuing or interrupting a pregnancy." He also talks about "supporting the kids who are alive." Being his daughter, I went through many abandonment issues because Carlos Gamboa never cared to&nbsp; know me.<br /><br /> Based on my insistence, we were able to coordinate some meetings that became more and more complicated. We would see one another at service stations far from anyone who might recognize him. In the meetings he would repeat the argument that he loved me but that he couldn't be my father. In those days for a girl of 6 or 7 years, it was a very confusing story since I didn't have the emotional tools to understand what he was saying in such a contradictory way. I was a girl who believed my father loved me; I waited for his calls on important dates like birthdays and holidays or any show of interest that never came. <br /><br />There were never any initiatives on his part, despite the fact that my mother and my heart father [stepfather] offered him many options to facilitate our bond like meeting in other provinces or paying his fare to the Federal Capital, the place where I live, so he could come see me. He never agreed and with the passing of time, the silences were longer and longer.<br /><br />I understood a lot later, in my adolescence that my father didn't love me so I sought affection in other members of my paternal family. Through the social networks I started to look for everyone with the last name Gamboa who might be a relative. There were many and I was even able to meet a cousin who with her parents and brothers, received me with joy. However, that unleashed a storm that manifested itself in verbal and psychological abuse over the phone by Gamboa towards me and my mom.<br /><br />Carlos Gamboa's family lined up behind him, protecting him and preventing me from knowing them and completing part of my identity and my life -- what Gamboa says he's defending. In this very unfortunate episode, Víctor Gamboa, Carlos' twin brother, had a terribly violent and destructive role, being that at the beginning he seemed to be a trustworthy person and a good father.<br /><br /> In this struggle to achieve recognition, space, a little affection and to complete my story, I ended up confronting the Catholic Church of Salta which, as we know, has a lot of power and through a lawyer defended its interests, going completely against my rights.<br /><br /> So, when my progenitor talks about "respecting both lives" I must say that he did not respect the life of his daughter because of defending his image and his economic privileges. The church covered it up and helped hide me. No one was to be aware of my existence.<br /><br />I was the victim of all these manipulations that affected me psychologically. The abandonment of the child who was born is so destructive for the personality that it makes it still hard for me today when bonding or shaping my personal relationships to the point that I came to think that I didn't deserve to be loved.<br /><br />Carlos Gamboa in the interview says the Church should form and respect people but he never did that with me; his actions affected my way of being, the way in which I bond with people and how I've developed emotionally, having experienced so much emotional manipulation, having heard so many empty words that have affected me forever. I've been going to a psychologist as long as I can remember. How to trust others if you can't trust your biological father? That's why, when in the interview he says he's "for both lives" and says "let's not harm it more with another abuse," I must state that the damage he did to me is irreversible, harm that also manifested itself in relation to child support since for him to comply with his obligation, a private agreement had to be concluded. On numerous occasions he fell behind on the support payments and abused my mother when she requested what was due me, so that situation was very violent.<br /><br /> So when Carlos Gamboa and the Church he represents talk about "yes to life", "yes to all life", and "every life is worthy," I ask myself what does he mean by that? Why does he feel he has the moral authority to say it so lightly? Imposing with this argument a way of thinking on society, knowing that his words have a lot of weight but his actions contradict him. I have to say that all this seems total hypocrisy to me.<br /><br /> Against my father's position, my family and I are in favor of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Act without modifications because we know that this Act will help women and gestating bodies that are at risk or want to decide about their future. We also think that abandonment is death and that the dogma of the Church should not be interposed in republican life and that women's decisions should be respected.<br /><br /> To conclude, I would add that this letter was very hard to write and that there have been months of preparation, analysis and removing issues that hurt or are troublesome, but it leaves me somewhat clearer, it frees me from the stigma the curia imposed on me at birth. Now I can proudly say that I participated in the vigil at the [Chamber of] Deputies, that I've had an ideological life formation oriented towards human rights and those of women and dissident sexualities and that is why I'm making this letter public. My name is Agustina María Gamboa Arias and I have decided on my own -- and with my family's support -- to stop being an accomplice in the moral double standard of the Church of which my biological father, Carlos Gamboa, is a part. <br /><br />I am expressing myself because I want abortion to be LEGAL SAFE and FREE and that there be SECULAR SEXUAL EDUCATION WITH THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE in ALL educational institutions in the country, and because I want ALL women and gestating bodies to have FREE CHOICE over our bodies and our lives.<br /><br />LONG LIVE THE FEMINIST STRUGGLE!"</i><br /><br />Gamboa Arias' public statement caused a huge uproar. On July 31st, Msgr. Mario Cargnello, the Archbishop of Salta, <a href="http://www.arquidiocesissalta.org.ar/">issued a communique</a> asking God's forgiveness and that of the faithful for the pain caused by this news, by the scandal it has caused. While he did not apologize directly to Ms. Gamboa Arias, Msgr. Cargnello did say that he wants to "staunch" her wounds and would be launching a canonical investigation into her allegations. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-91381295314107287872018-08-02T15:45:00.000-04:002018-08-02T15:45:12.067-04:00Truth and its violent consequences<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pbIgWDF2rMM/W2NbiJt9-oI/AAAAAAAALPo/vQsgCfFX9Vws5gP9c_Qr5kHMSTkDp4sDwCLcBGAs/s1600/Gebara2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="550" height="157" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pbIgWDF2rMM/W2NbiJt9-oI/AAAAAAAALPo/vQsgCfFX9Vws5gP9c_Qr5kHMSTkDp4sDwCLcBGAs/s200/Gebara2018.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by Ivone Gebara (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="https://www.cartacapital.com.br/blogs/dialogos-da-fe/a-verdade-e-suas-violentas-consequencias">Carta Capital</a> <i>(em português)</i><br />July 5, 2018<br /><br />"Do you swear to tell the truth and only the truth?" I swear. "Do you swear by God, by the homeland, by the family, by your honor, by the Bible?" I swear. What would be this truth to which one must swear and often risk one's own life?<br /><br />&nbsp;According to the Greek origin of the word, truth -- <i>aletheia</i> -- has to do with what is not occult, the unconcealed, the unmasked. It extends through diverse knowledge, situations, emotions and personal and social actions. In other words, it gambles on the possibility of the human person revealing something that only she knows, something that she has discovered, something she is hiding about facts, people, situations or about herself.<br /><br />Truth would be a kind of clarity about a fact, an event, a feeling, and therefore a belief that we are able to reach into the depth of ourselves and even reveal it to others. Such behavior means to many that it is possible to find 'something', 'a thing', 'an emotion' free from deception or lies, as if it were a nugget of gold, or pure love.<br /><br />Some ancient philosophers believed that there was a truth of things, that it was possible for the word to be identified with the object and the object with the word. They believed in an adequation between thought, essence and thing, and vice versa.<br /><br />We moderns and postmoderns find that this quasi-coincidence does not exist, but that truth is a personal and even collective point of view on interpretations of life. A thick cloud envelops us and prevents us from reaching the place indicated by our desire. Reason and desire are in conflict.<br /><br />We contemporaries are lovers of circumstances, of changes and we believe in the mutation of truths, in their multiple conditionalities and consequently we live in their social belligerence.<br /><br />Truth is in social movement, in its multi-faceted personal and collective reality. This is why all attempts, whether from politics or from religion, to unify the truth have led and lead to totalitarianism and violence. And both one and the other in their historical diversity and in the diversity of their forms of truth have tried the way of unification of truth and have used weapons to defend it.<br /><br />Both of them from their authority have wanted to impose their truths without perceiving the truth of diversity and the impossibility of a unification by force. However, we are well aware that the foundation of political truth expressed in the forms of government and the authority of leaders is visible, whereas the foundation of religions and in particular of monotheisms, is invisible. The legitimization of religious power is done through divine invisibility that is presumed to be represented by the clerical hierarchy.<br /><br />Today, we are experiencing a certain failure of the traditional foundations of the order of truths. We understand the world differently. What we see in fact is the difficulty of total agreements from affirmations called 'truths', especially those emanating from political and religious powers.<br /><br />Moreover, empirically we experience the cruelty of truth every day. When we denounce the lie and want to affirm something of the truth, of the real, we are condemned. Therefore, the truth we know in history is the mother of pain, the mother of suffering, the mother of injustice, the mother of murders. Mother in the sense of being generative, of giving birth.<br /><br />If we reveal it, we are brought to court, we are expelled from parties, synagogues and churches, crucified, imprisoned, condemned to death, forced to drink hemlock and tortured by those who think they have the power over truth.<br /><br />If we tell the truth we have our works burned, our teaching interrupted, expulsion from our land to guarantee the truth of those who claim to be its owners. Truth is cruel! It saves no one from accusations, from prisons, from the many Gulags in history!<br /><br />In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen published a story called "The Emperor's new clothes." In it, a king is deceived by two astute tailors who make him believe that they would weave him beautiful clothes that only the intelligent and capable ones would be able to see. They spend weeks weaving and making the king try on the clothes by making flattering remarks to him.<br /><br />The king himself, wearing the invisible clothes, does not admit to being either incapable or unintelligent. He decides to wear the clothing and introduce himself to his subjects. They all look at it and admire it, but no one is able to reveal the truth about the king's nakedness because it would reveal their own ignorance. In this, a child in the crowd shouts, "The king is naked." The truth came out of the mouth of a child who was not afraid of being ridiculed or called incompetent or unintelligent.<br /><br />She said what her eyes saw. The truth was stated by a child. It is she who reveals the hidden, it is she who says what everyone sees but is unable to say. Revelation is dangerous, truth is threatening.<br /><br />The everyday story continues to show the cruelty of truth. Donald Trump's violent 'truth' is that he does not want more foreigners in the United States. He separates the children from their families and puts them in prisons. The numbers are scary. More than 2000 children are imprisoned! The truth about immigrants is that they are seeking to save their lives, to get out of hunger and go to a place where there is work and decent survival.<br /><br />The conflicts show and the cruelty of some is evident over the fragility of others. The violence and hatred of some contrasts with the fragility of others. How to live with so many 'truths' and so many lies? Is there a way to negotiate them?<br /><br />There might be another way when, according to the Book of Genesis, we disobey the all-powerful Father, and, seduced by the serpent of freedom that inhabits us, we transgress orders and are expelled from Paradise ...<br /><br />Truth makes us wanderers in search of our bread with the sweat of our body and the abundance of our tears. Truth makes us without a fatherland, without a motherland, without family, without the friends of our childhood, without the smell of our land, without God. Might this be the freedom of truth?<br /><br />Deep down it is the lie that protects us, it is the one that teaches us juggling to carry out our intent. It is the lie that hides our face from the face of others who judge and persecute us. That is why we love lies more, although we say that we swear by the truth and seek the truth.<br /><br />The fact is that we are wanderers, and in this situation and condition, we can only count on the companions of that long journey. Like the child who cried out the king's nakedness, we need to welcome each other's cry of helplessness and realize that deceit about ourselves leads us to premature death, kills life, kills forests, rivers ... It kills the planet and us with it. This tragedy is an aspect of truth.<br /><br />Along these lines, we are witnessing today wandering from the truth and lack of rights from different human groups. Thousands and thousands of homeless, landless, and stateless, each seeking the most important truth -- "protecting your life and that of your neighbors." To have the right to your own life is the first written truth, inscribed in our own bodies, in our breathing in search of air.<br /><br />That is why one leaves his land occupied by others who are extracting precious metals, wood, water and gold from it. They kill the earth and its population in the name of their truth called progress, human development ... It is boundless greed. Conflicts are inevitable when those who have not died go out in search of a land to live in.<br /><br />And where they arrive, they are not welcomed; on the contrary, they are expelled and remain wanderers. For all this, the idea of a total integral humanism and a pure truth that harmonizes us in a single vision is not only ambiguous and deceptive but unlikely.<br /><br />Perhaps the way out is not to solve problems through a single social, political or religious truth since the very truth of human history is plurality. And this plurality or diversity manifests itself in all human activities and in the whole flow of life where the unforeseen and foreseen mingle, attract one another, cancel one another, and coexist.<br /><br />One step would be to promote respect for the real complexity of truth and the need to continually unmask our multiple temptations to reduce the world of others to our own truth, to eliminate the lives of others to affirm our economic, political, and religious truth. Educate ourselves at all levels for diversity to avoid totalitarian dogmatisms.<br /><br />Diversity costs. It is not just a spoken word, it is an external and internal modification of ourselves when in fact we want a world where all will fit with dignity. Everything is allowed, but everything is not good for the maintenance of life, human dignity and the whole planet. Respect for the diversity of life and its total interdependence must be part of our common creed.<br /><br />It is what opens us to the hope of unity in real diversity. This unity is made of a continually renewed dialogue and it is in our image, fragile and helpless, always open to betrayal and communion. It is hope, in the uncertainty of the journeys. And on these journeys, the luminous truth that stubbornly inhabits us lives and will live, mixed with the many stones of the way.Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-49920452644509117212018-08-02T12:53:00.000-04:002018-08-02T12:53:46.375-04:00The last battle of the activist nun: "I'm going back to the cloister"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j1YI5tXp_k8/W2M2ZQLMDgI/AAAAAAAALPc/5aGUcWA6g0QMPZY-fsuwni19OUwTcijRACLcBGAs/s1600/Forcades-2018b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1500" height="133" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j1YI5tXp_k8/W2M2ZQLMDgI/AAAAAAAALPc/5aGUcWA6g0QMPZY-fsuwni19OUwTcijRACLcBGAs/s200/Forcades-2018b.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by Paolo Rodari (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2018/07/16/lultima-battaglia-della-suora-attivista--torno-in-clausura11.html">La Repubblica</a> (in Italiano)<br />July 16, 2018<br /><br />"The constituent process in Catalonia will end on the first of September. On that day I'll return to the normal life of the monastery, ever more convinced that the Catalan movement for independence from Spain is an opportunity to deepen democracy and tackle some fundamental issues of exclusion and social abuse. This has opened the eyes of many people to the insufficient nature of our democracy and to the fact that in the globalized twenty-first century, political power is subject to economic power."<br /><br />A feminist theologian and Benedictine nun, Teresa Forcades left her cloister two years ago to engage in politics, fighting for the independence of Catalonia. In a month, she will return to the monastery where she will continue her battles, but in another way. Among the most read writers in Spain, engaged against the pharmaceutical industry lobby, for gender rights and for the LGBT world, she tells <i>La Repubblica</i> about these two years "outside the walls" and the challenges of the future, all with a look beyond the Spanish borders.<br /><br />On Italy, for example, Forcades has precise ideas: "Lega ["The League"] is a far-right movement. All extreme right-wing movements are dangerous for democracy because they are by definition authoritarian, enemies of pluralism and suspicious of critical thinking. I believe that the widespread success of current right-wing authoritarianism in Europe is a reaction to the frustration created by capitalist democracy -- it is impossible to have political democracy without economic democracy. One can't be expected to act as a responsible democratic citizen after spending ten hours a day working in degrading conditions for a poor salary. The book <i>Hired</i> by James Bloodworth opens one's eyes in that sense and so does <i>Il mondo deve sapere</i> ["The world must know"] by Michela Murgia."<br /><br />For Forcades the political ideal is the United Nations, "but not the one we have today, with the right of veto, nor the European Union we have today, designed to favor economic powers." "The economic powers," she says, "have more power than politicians, more power than voters. I see this as the main problem."<br /><br />In the Church, Forcades is always an active nudge. In fact, there are many subjects on which the Church is struggling to have a new view. Among these, homosexuality. The catechism preaches acceptance, but at the same time asks that homosexual persons live in chastity. Says Forcades: "I think it's deeply inhuman. I believe that homosexual marriage should be recognized as a sacrament because what constitutes the sacrament of marriage is what this particular human bond has in common with the life of the Trinity and the life of the Trinity has nothing to do with gender or sexual complementarity and nothing to do with having children. Homosexuality is not a problem, homophobia is." And again: "On some issues, such as social justice, the Church's doctrine and some of its practices are prophetic and ahead of our times. On other matters, the Church is really behind. It is particularly behind on sexual morality (such as prohibiting contraception) and on the role of women and I think this is most likely a consequence of having only celibate males who govern the Church." Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-17368475638695222262018-07-25T18:59:00.002-04:002018-07-25T18:59:52.261-04:00José María Castillo: Why are women not allowed to be priests like men?by Jesús Bastante (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/libros/2018/07/24/jose-maria-castillo-por-que-no-se-permite-que-las-mujeres-puedan-ser-sacerdotes-igual-que-los-hombres-evangelio-religion-cristianismo-libros-desclee-evangelio-jesus.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />July 24, 2018<br /><br />José María Castillo is one of our best theologians. Persecuted and condemned for years for supporting a popular theology, open and close to the poor. Now the coming of Pope Francis has meant a full-fledged rehabilitation for Castillo.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OHPn3P8h_2I/W1j6XOYDS_I/AAAAAAAALPE/oRujZa842ls4PMObFDyGy6oaw0s3NxLLACLcBGAs/s1600/Castillo-Francisco-2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="441" data-original-width="640" height="276" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OHPn3P8h_2I/W1j6XOYDS_I/AAAAAAAALPE/oRujZa842ls4PMObFDyGy6oaw0s3NxLLACLcBGAs/s400/Castillo-Francisco-2018.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Not just theological but visible -- Bergoglio himself received and thanked Pepe Castillo for his theology in a historical day that we remember in this interview on the occasion of the publication of <i>La religión de Jesús. Comentarios al Evangelio diario Ciclo C</i> ["The religion of Jesus: Comments on the daily Gospel, Cycle C"], published by Desclée. The future of the Church and religions, also on the table, with one clear idea: "The Gospel is not a religion and, therefore, nor is Christianity -- it's a life project."<br /><br /><b>It's always an honor and a pleasure. Pepe Castillo, welcome to your home.</b><br /><br />Indeed, this is an extension of my house.<br /><br /><b>That is also what's intended. We are trying to create a big family at Religión Digital, with you and us. In this family there are always new and very desired children who come because, moreover, this is a book you do every year and we now have it here: <i>La religión de Jesús. Comentarios al Evangelio diario Ciclo C (2018-2019)</i> by José María Castillo, from the publisher Desclée. They've always chosen some precious photos of children in recent years.</b> <br /><br />Yes. They take care of the cover, among other things. It's now been eleven years in a row.<br /><br /><b>Isn't it complicated? In the end, there are three cycles, right?</b><br /><br />Yes.<br /><b><br /></b><b>You've repeated that; this will be the third or the fourth one.</b><br /><br />Sure. It's one of the difficulties that doing this book and its corresponding commentaries has at this point -- there's a danger of repeating oneself. I've tried to overcome it by paying a lot of attention to something that seems basic to me and it's the situation. Because life is changing very rapidly and, moreover, in very deep and very important things. And, as such, responding to the questions that people are asking or the problems people are experiencing seems to me one of the most important things to do to the extent that a book of this sort can do it.<br /><br /><b>And what does the Gospel tell us about what's happening in the world today?</b><br /><br />It tells us that on very fundamental questions of life this world has drifted towards other interests, other problems, and other solutions that are exactly opposite to the Gospel. This seems important to me. And what I want to add is, as I see it, what is most fundamental at this time is the relationship between the Church and the Gospel.<br /><br /><b>What is that relationship? What problems do we have in that relationship?</b><br /><br />The main problem, as I see it and as I'm developing it in a book that will come out after the summer, is that the Church, to a great extent and fundamentally, has marginalized the Gospel<br /><br /><b>But wouldn't it be the base on which it sits?</b><br /><br />Sure, it's the base; it's the axis, the core. But, however, it isn't. Although we're lucky to have the current pope. <br /><br />Pope Francis is a unique character in the history of the papacy -- he is, as far as we know, an entirely original pope. From my point of view, he's a man who, without saying it, deep inside him, is what he has set for himself and how he has programmed it. But the fact is that he's changing the papacy. And he's changing it by his lifestyle, his humanity above all, his closeness to the people, his harmony with those no one else tunes in -- the most helpless and unfortunate people of this world.<br /><br />This pope is changing the situation. He's changing the papacy and he's also changing the future of the Church. I want to emphasize that.<br /><br /><b>Is it enough? I mean, he's still a man in front of a mastodon like the church institution, that he's fighting strongly and fiercely so as not to commit harakiri, not disappear, in the sense of disappearing from the hierarchies, from the links of power, this pyramidal structure that leaves the people of God a bit drowning.</b><br /><br />Yes, that's how it is, because deep down there's a threat that's much more serious. It's no secret that the Pope has great -- we're going to say it -- enemies in the Church. And very high level enemies. Not just in the secular, political, economic, social, intellectual world...but most painfully, in the ecclesiastical world.<br /><br /><b>He has them at home.</b><br /><br />Yes. Enemies who would like to get him out of the way as soon as possible, or for God to take him out of the way. And the root of the problem, from my point of view, is that the Church since its own origins has always had difficulty, distance from and sometimes a very strong contradiction with the Gospel.<br /><br />Let's not forget a very important thing: the Gospel is plain and simply not a religion. Proof of it is that religion killed the protagonist of the Gospel, who is Jesus. And according to the accounts of the Gospel, which ultimately is a narrative theology not laid out in theories or doctrines but in stories of deeds, of life events.<br /><br />These recompilations of tales that each one of the evangelists organized and presented differently, basically concur on one essential thing which, normally, a notable quantity of the clerical world refuses to acknowledge.<br /><br /><b>And what is it?</b><br /><br />That the gospel is not a religion and, therefore, Christianity isn't either. It's a life project. And I say it isn't a religion because of what I already indicated before and I'm not tired of repeating: we should never forget that the Gospel is the story of a conflict. A conflict that ended in death and -- this is curious -- the great defender and the one who most resisted killing Jesus was, according to the Passion stories, the Roman procurator.<br /><br /><b>Yes, Pilate.</b><br /><br />The remarkable thing is that those most determined that he not only had to be killed but killed on a cross (that is, in the most cruel and humiliating and degrading way there was in that culture and in that society) were the highest officials of the religion.<br /><br />The fact that the Church and Christianity have been presented, lived out, been organized and are in society as one more religion has been at the cost of defacing, deforming and marginalizing the axis and core of the Gospel.<br /><br /><b>So, -- and we're always discussing this -- how do you manage to expand the message, the life project of Jesus to the whole world without becoming a religion that, moreover, is attached to a power? Because without the Roman Empire, this expansion would probably have been impossible, And without certain ties between power and religion, surely Jesus' message would not have reached so many people over the centuries.</b><br /><br /><b>Is this a theory of the lesser evil? Or did it serve for a period to spread the message but the institution should have withdrawn, afterwards, from its relationship with power?</b><br /><br />What I've been able to find out from reading, studying and reflecting on this practically all my life, but especially in recent years, is that there is a process that is provoked right from the start. I will be as brief as possible: The first is that the early Churches spread through the Empire without knowing the Gospel because the main propagator of those Churches was Saint Paul. Saint Paul didn't know Jesus or, therefore, the Gospel either. What he experienced in the famous incident on the road to Damascus when, they say, he fell off the horse (although the story doesn't mention any horse) was the experience of Christ resurrected. Therefore: Christ, no longer of this world but after this world in the fullness of his glory in eternity.<br /><br /><b>So it looked like the PP primaries, because Paul and Peter (Paul did know and dealt with Peter) already had their squabbles about how this ought to be. Sounds a bit like Cospedal/Soraya </b>[Translator's note: This is a reference to María Dolores de Cospedal and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, two rivals in Spain's Partido Popular (PP) party]<b>.</b><br /><br />They had clashes because of this and for other reasons for which we don't have time now. But the fact is that Paul didn't know Jesus. And also he came to say, in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, that Jesus according to the flesh (that is, the human Jesus) didn't matter to him. And he continues: "and if I once cared about that, at this moment it matters not to me."<br /><br /><b>The Church today, is it more Paul or more Peter? Or more neither of the two?</b><br /><br />The Church isn't confined to Peter and Paul.<br /><br /><b>Well, but as a symptom: whether it's a more spiritual Church, a more structural Church, or more trying to go back to the roots.</b><br /><br />If by Peter we mean the Church that comes from the historical Jesus, obviously the Gospel is more of Peter. While the apostolic letters that Paul was sending to his Churches throughout the Empire from the East to -- they say he got there - Spain, Paul elaborates from his experience of the transcendental, of the Resurrected One. Very conditioned too by his education ideas -- he was educated in Greek culture, he's very marked by Stoic thinking, and it seems that one can state with full assurance that he had conditioning factors of Gnostic origin. And all that isn't Jesus, it's something else and goes along other paths.<br /><br />What's remarkable is that the gospels began to appear starting from the year 70, forty and some years after Jesus' death. When the Church had already been organized into communities and assemblies throughout the big cities of the Empire. That's the first difficulty.<br /><br />The second difficulty is that the assemblies that Paul's Churches organized didn't have temples, or what today we call churches, in the sense of buildings. They met in homes, but they had to be big homes and those who had homes like this were the rich and powerful. So the Church was organized around the homes of rich, important people and their consequent interests.<br /><br />The third factor -- that many people don't know and that has never been taken into account -- is that in the first centuries the whole Empire was bilingual -- Greek was spoken above all, Latin too. But the gospels were drafted in Greek, and educated people knew Greek. So, people of a certain social and cultural level with all the attachments that inevitably entails. And the poor, what did they do? Well, what they've always done and still do: they stayed on the margin.<br /><br />The first complete translation of the Bible we know of isn't the one given by the famous patrologist Quasten from the year 180, which is already enough: it would be almost a century and a half long after the death of Jesus. According to Tertullian, the 3rd century is when there's news of this first translation of the whole Bible into Latin. So for the first two centuries the people couldn't know the Gospel.<br /><br />There's a fourth very important factor: at the beginning of the 4th century comes the famous so-called "conversion of Constantine." From that moment privileges begin to be granted to the Church. I'll not dwell on this. But it's worth taking into account. And in the same 4th century, now at the end, with Emperor Theodosius who was a native of what we now call Spain (from Aragon, it seems).<br /><br /><b>He was the one who declared the Church as the official one of the Empire.</b><br /><br />Sure. Theodosius was the emperor who took a step further than Constantine because Constantine allowed it but Theodosius declared it the only one and all the others went underground. From that time on, end of the 4th century to the beginning of the 6th century, a phenomenon happens that has been studied carefully, well documented, by one of the most competent men we have in this business. Probably the most competent one in the whole world: an Oxford professor named Peter Brown. He wrote a book that has a very curious title, <i>Through the Eye of a Needle</i>. Which is that Gospel thing where a camel enters through the eye of a needle before a rich man enters the Kingdom of God.<br /><br />This historian shows that from about the end of the 4th century, the whole 5th century, and until the beginning of the 6th century, a surprising phenomenon happens: an avalanche entrance of the most rich and powerful people into the Church. The thing got to the point that there were many cases of bishops named without even being baptized. The best known case is the one of the one who was bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose. Saint Ambrose was a catechumen, and from a catechumen he was consecrated bishop because they saw he was the only one who could rule an ungovernable Church because of the troubles it had. That was repeated by the Gauls and also in Roman Hispania. It spread.<br /><br />This massive entry of rich and powerful people into the Church gave it a completely new twist: the Gospel was maintained, but it wasn't lived out. And here I want to emphasize an issue that seems capital to me: the Gospel isn't a theory, it's a way of life. And it's present to the extent that it is lived out. If it isn't, we will have one or many theories -- there are even a lot of gospel sayings that have become popular sayings -- but saying them is one thing and living them, another.<br /><br />And this is the Church's big problem: that we have an institution that's well organized, well managed, and well structured but also alienated and distant from the gospel. Although there are individuals, movements and groups that live it, that make an effort to live it. It occured to me at the time of Paul VI, being in Rome on Easter Sunday, to go to St. Peter's Square to the Pope's Mass. I lasted ten minutes there. When I saw the impressive spectacle, I thought, "And all this, what does it have to do with Jesus who was born in a manger and died hanging like a criminal?"<br /><br /><b>Have you found an answer to that?</b><br /><br />I assure you that that morning I went to take a walk through the streets of Trastevere and I was turning it around in my head: " Have I lost my mind? Am I crazy? Or are the people crazy? How is it possible that the story of Jesus was the source of this?".<br /><br />That day there were representatives of those soldiers who killed so many people in Argentina. There were representatives of the dictatorships of Latin America, of Europe...Search me! From all over the world, and there in the first row...<br /><br />How it impressed me when I was a student and my parents, now seniors, came to see me in Rome. And the Pope was still using the gestatorial chair, the tiara and all that apparatus of bugles, incense, vestments ...<br /><br />I remember that my mother (she was a good woman, but we're from a village and a simple family) who had no special culture, went pale. I asked her:<br /><br />"Mom, is something wrong with you?"<br /><br />"I'm sinning."<br /><br />"Mom, please, we're in St. Peter's. You don't sin here; you come here to pray or join the Church." <br /><br />And my mother said to me:<br /><br />"It's that I remember that the only thing the Lord got up on was a little donkey. And look how that man is coming!"<br /><br /><b>What a bit of lesson.</b><br /><br />That has stuck in my soul and I haven't stopped turning it over since then. And now, in the eleven years I've been writing this about the gospels, I haven't stopped thinking about the same problem.<br /><br />I'm now finishing a book titled <i>El Evangelio marginado</i> ["The marginalized Gospel"]. And it's that this is painful; that's why the current pope is a blessing. But him fighting alone...Although he's not alone at all, he's very conditioned. And what they're saying about "why doesn't he remove them all and put others in" is said very soon; the Pope has to be very careful in this because a schism could be organized.<br /><br /><b>Pontiffs are bridge-builders not destroyers of communion and, sure, it's complicated. The work Francis has ahead of him is very hard.</b><br /><br />It's an extremely complicated thing, and delicate -- being good but at the same time being firm and consistent with everyone. Harmonizing these two things is an authentic miracle. It will take years and years for this to succeed. <br /><br />But there are things I don't want to keep quiet about and I'll take advantage of this time.<br /><br />First -- I''ve already said it -- that it would be fundamental to organize the family thing because it's a shame; after all there are many thousands of people who still go to Mass. Few institutions have so many people guaranteed every Sunday.<br /><br />Another important thing would be to allow married men as priests. And more so when it's known for sure that it [Translator's note: mandatory celibacy] was a tradition that was introduced in the 4th or 5th century.<br /><br />And third, the woman problem: why are women not allowed to be able to be priests the same as men are? Here there's a more basic issue: Why is a sociological, cultural and historical phenomenon so frequently confused with a theological fact?<br /><br />Naturally women in ancient cultures were marginalized. And we're still experiencing residues of that. But if we're convinced of anything, and each day we see it more clearly, it's that a society that marginalizes women can't go anywhere. And the Church has to address this phenomenon as soon as possible. Women have the same rights as men, and in theology too. Moreover, reading and re-reading, studying the gospels, one of the things that most draws your attention is the exquisite care, protection, respect, and support Jesus gave women, always. Whether Jewish women or of other origins, and regardless of their conduct. Jesus always defended them; well, we're going to defend them.<br /><br />And the last thing I want to say is I don't have the mouth or the words, nor do I find arguments to ponder and thank Pope Francis for the fact that he himself called me at my home and organized for us to be able to see each other and have an interview. I told him:<br /><br />"Look, Father Francis, you and I are both undocumented Jesuits just like Díez Alegría, except that he came out on top and I've come out below."<br /><br />And he laughed. Then I gave him two books and he told me:<br /><br />"Keep on writing. Don't stop doing it because with this you're doing people a lot of good."<br /><br />This has done me more good than all the preachers, spiritual directors, confessors, etc. that I've had in my life.<br /><br /><b>We'll heed the Pope, right? Keep on doing it.</b><br /><br />I'm trying to. And though I'm quite old now, I keep on working and will keep on working with enthusiasm while mind and body endure.<br /><br /><b>Age is in the heart, José María, and you're very young. Like this girl on the cover of your book: <i>La religión de Jesús. Comentario al evangelio diario. Ciclo C (2018-2019)</i> published by Desclée, as always.</b><br /><br /><b>Many thanks for the chat and for your magnificent work on Religión Digital too -- this huge service you do to a ton of readers who follow you the world over.</b><br /><br /><b>Many thanks and ever onward.</b><br /><br />Many thanks to you and to Religión Digital for the huge good you do throughout the world, especially in Spain, in Europe, and in Latin America.<br /><br /><b>Here we are, José María, and thanks to people like you, we manage.</b> Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-49018461060174052542018-07-23T18:14:00.000-04:002018-07-23T18:14:02.525-04:00Recovering the Christianity of Mary Magdalene<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B75TAXzbuMs/W1ZQBk3968I/AAAAAAAALOs/PRmIL2yZlcA42bDNscofcQfgWgVlMWd6gCLcBGAs/s1600/MaryMagdalene-2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="328" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B75TAXzbuMs/W1ZQBk3968I/AAAAAAAALOs/PRmIL2yZlcA42bDNscofcQfgWgVlMWd6gCLcBGAs/s200/MaryMagdalene-2018.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>By Juan José Tamayo (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.redescristianas.net/recuperar-el-cristianismo-de-maria-magdalenajuan-jose-tamayo/">Redes Cristianas</a><br />July 23, 2018<br /><br />On the occasion of the feast of Mary Magdalene, which is celebrated on July 22.<br /><br />In her work <i>Le Livre de la Cité des Dames</i> ("The Book of the City of Ladies"), in the early 15th century, French writer Christine de Pizan noted the disparity between men's negative image of women and the knowledge she had of herself and other women. The men stated that female behavior was full of every vice -- a judgment that in Christine's opinion showed meanness of spirit and dishonesty. She, on the contrary, after talking with many women of her time who told her their most intimate thoughts, and studying the lives of prestigious women of the past, recognizes their gift for words and a special intelligence for the study of law, philosophy and government.<br /><br />The situation then repeats itself today in most religions which are patriarchally configured and have never gotten along well with women. The latter are not usually considered religious or moral actors,therefore they are put under the guidance of a male who leads them along the path of virtue, understood and practiced patriarchally as obedience, submission, modesty, silence, humility (=humiliation), service, self-denial, sacrifice. They are denied the right to freedom on the assumption that they would misuse it. They are vetoed at the time of assuming leadership responsibilities because it is understood that they are irresponsible by nature. They are excluded as impure from sacred space. They are silenced because it is believed they are garrulous and say improper things. They are the object of every sort of violence -- moral, religious, symbolic, cultural, physical, etc.<br /><br />However, religions would have hardly been able to be born and survive without them. Without women, it is possible that Christianity would not have emerged and perhaps not expanded as it did. They accompanied its founder Jesus of Nazareth from the beginning in Galilee to the end at Golgotha. They traveled the cities and towns with him proclaiming the Gospel (=Good News), they helped him with their resources and formed part of his movement on equal terms with the men.<br /><br />The feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has shown in her book <i>In Memory of Her</i> that Jesus' first followers were Galilean women freed from all patriarchal dependence, with economic autonomy, who identified themselves as women in solidarity with other women and met to celebrate common meals, live experiences of healing and reflect as a group.<br /><br />Jesus' movement was an egalitarian collective of men and women followers, without discrimination for reasons of gender. It did not identify women with motherhood. It opposed Jewish laws that discriminated against them, like the libel of repudiation and stoning, and it questioned the patriarchal family model. It harmoniously combined the option for the poor and emancipation from patriarchal structures. Women were friends of Jesus, trusted people and disciples who were with him until the most dramatic moment of the crucifixion, when the male followers had abandoned him.<br /><br />In Jesus' movement, women recovered the dignity, citizenship, moral authority and freedom that both the Roman Empire and the Jewish religion denied them. They were recognized as religious and moral agents without the need of patriarchal mediation or dependence. One example is Mary Magdalene, a figure of myth, legend and history, and icon in the struggle for women's emancipation.<br /><br />Both the secular feminist movements and the theologies from the gender perspective appeal to her, whom they consider a fundamental link in the building of an egalitarian society respectful of difference. Mary Magdalene responds, I think, to the profile Virginia Woolf draws of Ethel Smyth: "She belongs to the race of pioneers, of path makers. She has gone before and felled trees and blasted rocks and built bridges and thus made a way for all those who come after her."<br /><br />Women were the first people who lived the experience of the resurrection while the male disciples were unbelieving at the beginning. It is that experience that gave rise to the Christian church. One more reason to state that without them, Christianity would not exist. Quite a few of the leaders of the communities founded by Paul of Tarsus were women, according to the principle that he himself established in the Letter to the Galatians: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female..." (Gal 3:28)<br /><br />However, things soon changed. Peter, the apostles and their successors, the pope and the bishops appropriated the keys of the Kingdom for themselves. They made off with the ruling rod which had nothing to do with the shepherd's crook to pastor the sheep, while on women they imposed the veil, silence and religious or domestic cloister. This happened when the churches stopped being domestic communities and became political institutions.<br /><br />When will such injustice to women in Christianity be repaired? One would have to go back to its origins, more in tune with the emancipation movements than with the Christian churches of today. It is necessary to question the supremacy - the primacy - of Peter, which implies the concentration of power in one single person and impedes women's access to shared leadership responsibilities.<br /><br />We have to recover the discipleship of Mary Magdalene, "Apostle to the Apostles," a recognition she was given in Christian Antiquity and that feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza recovered in an article by the same pioneer title in feminist research on the Christian Testament. It is necessary to revive, re-found the Christianity of Mary Magdalene, inclusive of men and women, in continuity with the men and women prophets of Israel and with the prophet Jesus of Nazareth, but not with the apostolic succession, of marked hierarchical-patriarchal accent, of scholastic theology, that viewed the Church as a monarchy.<br /><br />A Christianity forgotten among the walled ruins of the city of Magdala, Mary Magdalene's place of birth, which I visited five years ago, seven kilometers from Capernaum, where Jesus of Nazareth resided during the time his public activity lasted. In the excavations that are taking place in Magdala, an important synagogue was discovered in 2009. There is found the subversive memory of the original Christianity led by Jesus and Mary Magdalene that was defeated by official Christianity.<br /><br />But from that Christianity buried under those ruins emerges a vigorous liberating Christianity, defiant and empowered through the egalitarian movements that are rising on the margins of the great Christian churches, as rose up on the edges the first movement of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the other women who accompanied him during the few months his public activity lasted.<br /><br />It is necessary to inherit the moral and spiritual authority of Mary of Magdala as friend, disciple, successor of Jesus, and pioneer of equality. We have to rebuild the line of continuity of the emancipating movements throughout history and establish new inclusive alliances, created from below and not from power, fighting against the social, political and religious exclusion of women that ends in gender violence, and against discrimination against women, which is intersectional in nature -- by social class, culture, ethnicity, religion, affective-sexual identity, etc.<br /><br /><i>Juan José Tamayo is a member of the Comité Científico del Instituto Universitario de Estudios de Género of the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Among his works devoted to feminism should be cited: <b>Otra teología es posible. Interculturalidad, pluralismo religioso y feminismo</b> (Herder, Barcelona, 2012, 2nd ed.); <b>Cincuenta intelectuales para una conciencia crítica</b> (Fragmenta, Barcelona, 2013), that offers and intellectual profile of fourteen women pioneers of equality; <b>Invitación a la utopía. Ensayo histórico para tiempos de crisis</b> (Trotta, Madrid, 2012), that devotes a chapter to feminist utopia; <b>Religión, género y violencia</b> (Dykinson, Madrid, 2017, 2nd ed.). <b>Islam: sociedad, política y feminismo</b> (Dykinson, Madrid, 2018, 1st reprint).</i>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-83709248959748529042018-07-20T18:33:00.000-04:002018-07-20T18:33:14.777-04:00Gustavo Gutiérrez, Father of Liberation Theology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AK-XBzEcgD0/W1JdEDawmvI/AAAAAAAALOU/vwVCHLaMEuwBMNaFE7VRqrFvlm7TSeqMwCLcBGAs/s1600/GustavoGutierrez-BH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="540" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AK-XBzEcgD0/W1JdEDawmvI/AAAAAAAALOU/vwVCHLaMEuwBMNaFE7VRqrFvlm7TSeqMwCLcBGAs/s200/GustavoGutierrez-BH.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by Frei Betto (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="https://www.gentedeopiniao.com.br/colunista/frei-betto/gustavo-gutierrez-pai-da-teologia-da-libertacao-por-frei-betto">Gente de Opinião</a> (em português)<br />July 6, 2018<br /><br />Gustavo Gutiérrez turned 90 on June 8th. On the five continents, books, theses, articles and critiques about his work, as well as that of other theologians such as Leonardo Boff, Hugo Assmann, João Batista Libânio, Juan Luis Segundo, José Míguez Bonino, Elsa Támez, and many others identified with the principles and the methodology of liberation theology, proliferate.<br /><br />Liberation theology occupies a prima donna position in current theology. Thanks to Cardinal Ratzinger's "Instructions" (1984), it became a subject of interest even for the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, as I verified when I visited the country as part of a group of Brazilian theologians in June 1987.<br /><br />The two "Instructions" issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the proceedings against the book <i>Church: Charism and Power</i> and its author, Leonardo Boff, brought theological debate into the sacred walls of ecclesiastical institutions, and gave it ample space in the media, universities and political movements.<br /><br />The works of theologians provoke more interest than the personalities of their authors. This epistemological bias has its advantages. As long as the work is rigorous, according to the criteria of its specific field, there is no need to disturb the author, safe in his conquered privacy. However, divorce between author and work has not always been a mere whim of modern reason. It has sometimes served as an ideological instrument -- in the primitive sense in which Marx used the term "ideology" -- precisely to cover up the contradiction between author and work. Suffice it to recall the recent impact of the revelations that Heidegger collaborated with the Nazi regime.<br /><br />In the case of dead authors, biographies are always of great interest to those who seek a better understanding of the text within the context. Who today reads Althusser with the same attention that his works provoked before November 15, 1980, when the Marxist philosopher strangled his wife? In contrast, the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a Nazi concentration camp gave his works a new character, just as the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero guaranteed a wide distribution of his sermons.<br /><br />Although the main target is always the works they produce, the liberation theologians themselves have always aroused considerable controversy. In any case, we are accustomed to living in situations of conflict -- be it the occupation of lands that brought the brothers Leonardo and Clodovis Boff to prison in Petropolis on March 4, 1988, or the censures and punishments imposed by those who govern our Churches. <br /><br />A certain discomfort is created in some theological sectors of the First World precisely because of this criterion, which gives liberation theology a new character. In it, theological discourse can not be separated from pastoral commitment. The liberation theologian is not an armchair intellectual, confined to libraries and reading rooms, dedicated to academic rigor, protected from current conflicts.<br /><br />And liberation theology is not written without penetrating deeply, because the liberation theologian's starting point is not his supposedly enlightened mind but the pastoral practice of poor Christian communities, committed to the cause of people's liberation.<br /><br />For this reason, liberation theology does not exist without a link with its source -- the liberating practice of oppressed Christian communities in the Third World. Gramsci helps us to understand this new status of theology with his concept of "organic intellectual," which defines the relationship of the theologian to the popular movement. This explains why liberation theology is representative of grassroots groups through the support it receives from an immense network of Basic Ecclesial&nbsp; Communities and countless martyrs and confessors whose ecclesial life and prophecy are sources for the theologians' thought and production.<br /><br /><b>An "illegitimate" theology</b><br /><br />In Latin America, being an "illegitimate child" does not necessarily affect one's social image. We are all sons and daughters of relationships between Spaniards and Amerindians, Portuguese and Caboclos, whites and blacks, mestizos and mulattoes. Our racism is only for social effect -- it is diluted in the heat of the tropics, where sexuality is power and party, bargain and submission, fantasy and transgression. In this part of the world, the family is as recent a concept as its constitution. To paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, life extrapolates thought here. Not even theology escapes from the genealogical tree of uncertain roots and twisted branches. Questioning liberation theology about its legitimate ancestors is like asking an indigenous Mexican or a Colombian coffee planter about the historical truth behind his family tradition.<br /><br />Gustavo Gutiérrez can rightly be considered the father of liberation theology, for he was the first to publish a book with that title in 1971 through the Spanish Ediciones Sígueme. But he himself does not deny the importance for his work of his visit to Brazil in 1969, when he came into contact with our Basic Ecclesial Communities and experienced up close the drama of the assassination -- still unpunished today -- of Dom Helder Camara's youth advisor, Father Henrique Pereira Neto, strangled and shot by the Brazilian military dictatorship in Recife on May 26, 1969. Gutiérrez dedicated his <i>A Theology of Liberation</i> to him and to the Peruvian novelist José María Arguedas. Despite this, it is not possible to deny the European roots derived from Jacques Maritain's integral humanism, Mounier's engaged personalism, Teilhard de Chardin's progressive evolutionism, De Lubac's social dogmatics, Congar's theology of the laity Lebret's theology of development, Comblin's theology of revolution, and Metz's political theology.<br /><br />The Second Vatican Council encouraged the conditions for the severing of the umbilical cord that kept the theology of Latin America dependent on the womb of Mother Europe. By the beginning of the 1960s, the Cuban revolution, the failure of the Alliance for Progress, the crisis of the development model, and the growth of leftist movements not linked to the traditional Communist parties were some of the factors that led Latin American theologians to root the thought in the soil that they trod. Not that it was a matter of looking for categories that would allow a reinterpretation of social and political facts. The engine of the theory was the practice of grassroots Christian communities, rooted in the struggle. As they transformed the world, they also altered the model of the Church. Social change and ecclesiogenesis are ultimately linked.<br /><br />The building of an alternative political project does not leave the Church untouched, as if it were a community of angels hovering over the contradictions that cut through the fabric of society. The new element was the awareness, achieved in the life of the Basic Ecclesial Communities, that the Church is not just the Pope or the bishops, but the people of God in history. And the presence of this believing and oppressed people in the social movements of Latin America marked the faith with a critical character that gave rise to liberation theology.<br /><b><br /></b><b>An indigenous theologian</b><br /><br />At the seventh international conference of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) in Oaxtepec, Mexico, in December 1986, African American theologian James Cone complained that Latin American liberation theology was too white. The strange thing is that next to him was Gustavo Gutierrez, of typically indigenous appearance -- brown skin, round face, short and squat, with slightly almond-shaped eyes, revealing his Quechua ancestry. At home, his father spoke the language of the ancient Inca empire. But more than language and appearance, Gutiérrez inherited the style of the Andean Amerindians. And this is what surprises anyone who knows him. He combines -- not without some conflict -- a mind endowed with quick, rational, magisterial intelligence, which expresses itself in a language constructed like the parts of a precision instrument, and a sensibility that disarms all models of modern rationality.<br /><br />In him co-exist the intellectual trained in Louvain -- where he was a colleague of Camilo Torres and defended a thesis based on Freud -- and the Amerindian of the Peruvian altiplano. This is what allows him to enter a classroom without being noticed -- as if gliding on his own feet -- or visit his friend Miguel d'Escoto without anyone noticing his presence in Managua. It is as if he could travel not only on the roads accessible to urbanized travelers but also on the tracks and trails that only the inhabitants of the jungle know. This ancestral gift allows him to dominate a new language, a new field of knowledge, or to pass through New York, Paris, or Bonn like an Amerindian sneaking through trees and leaves, observing unobserved, fast as a bird and discreet as a llama.<br /><br />This characteristic allowed him to work on the draft of the famous Medellín Document, approved by the Latin American Episcopal Conference in 1968 -- a text that would become fundamental to the practice and theory of the Church of the poor in Latin America.<br /><br />On one occasion, Gutierrez arrived in Rome just as the Peruvian bishops were discussing his work with the highest dignitaries of the Curia. Who can swear that the final text, more favorable to him than the original draft, was not drafted by Gutiérrez's own quill?<br /><br />Discreet as a Capuchin, he moves in the political domain of theological conflicts with all the subtlety of a Jesuit. Although his expression sometimes reveals that metaphysical anguish characteristic of people to whom the narrow line separating death from life is familiar, he never panics, and his keen intuition is capable of presenting immediate solutions to complicated problems as if he had meditated for years on an issue that has just emerged. He can sit for hours in an airport seat, writing an article or listening to someone, nervously biting a toothpick all the time with his strong, slightly separated teeth. His answers are almost always ironically amusing, as if he were setting up a riddle.<br /><br />In lecturing and speaking, he follows a rigid pattern so carefully assembled that he appears to have ornamented his text. His jokes give the words a flavor all his own, because he is always capable of manifesting that rare virtue that so enchants him -- humor. His sense of humor allows him to keep some critical distance from any fact. He does not allow himself to be betrayed by emotion because he knows that nothing human deserves to be taken too seriously.<br /><br />I lived with Gustavo Gutierrez in Puebla in January and February 1979 during the Third Latin American Episcopal Conference. At that time, his name, like those of other liberation theologians, had been excluded from the list of official advisers. He did not have direct access to the meeting place of the bishops, but many prelates came to him for help, which obliged him to spend whole nights drafting proposals.<br /><br />We were all housed precariously in two unfurnished apartments, which seldom had water and whose bathrooms lacked light. We survived with manna fallen from heaven because we had no kitchen, and in the city's restaurants we would have been easy prey of the international press, always in search of a theologian to decipher the ecclesiastical language of the texts or to give an exclusive interview that would confirm the rebellious and heretical nature of liberation theology...<br /><br />After dodging all foreign correspondents for days, on Sunday afternoon, February 4, 1979, Gutierrez accepted the suggestion of the Mexican Center for Social Communication (Cencos) to hold a press conference at the El Portal hotel. In his comments, he emphasized that liberation theology had not planned to begin with a reflection on the poor. The poor themselves, agents of historical transformation, began this theological reflection. The goal of liberation theology is to give the poor the right to think and express themselves theologically. The more the journalists pressured him to let something escape that might sound like heresy, the more Gutierrez was faithful to the poor and to the Church. He is a master at reconciling (harmonizing) seemingly opposing poles, presenting syntheses that encourage us to reinterpret tradition and the world around us.<br /><br />I met him on different occasions in his office - the "tower" of Rimac, a poor neighborhood in Lima. It was definitely one of the most cluttered offices I've ever seen. Scattered and mixed on the floor were Coke cans and Cardinal Ratzinger's books. Also bottles on top of papal documents, torn electrical wires roaming among dusty papers. There was no hint that a mop had been there since Francisco Pizarro's arrival in Peru. <br /><br />Despite that, the confusion was logical for him. He knew exactly where to find everything. And amid that pile of papers, he devoured the books he received. When he felt hungry, he ate some undefined common meal, together with the unemployed and underemployed.<br /><br />Gutierrez always preferred reading to writing. He had his own dynamic reading method, as if an antenna would show him the quality of the content of a work. Writing, for him, is a painful act. And when he writes, admitting that he has reached the final version is a sacrifice. He always considers it provisional text, to be revised and improved. For this reason, almost all of his works began as mimeographed lectures. It is very likely that he is the author of more unpublished works, known only to a small circle of readers, than published ones. In general, he does not even sign the mimeographed texts, which include an excellent introduction to the ideas of Marx and Engels and their relationship to Christianity.<br /><br />In January 1985, on the eve of Pope John Paul II's visit to Lima, I met him in the "tower" of Rimac, writing a series of articles related to this important ecclesial event. As we talked, Gutierrez tried to untangle a long telephone wire, which looked more like a ball of yarn in the mouth of a playful cat. He always keeps his hands busy when he is nervous, whether twisting a rubber band or playing with a ballpoint pen. And at that moment he had more than enough reasons to be tense, because Cardinal Ratzinger had announced for September a response to Leonardo Boff's defense of his <i>Church: Charisma and Power</i> against Rome's criticism. Christmas had passed and the Curia still remained silent. The second "Instruction" on liberation theology, based on a consultation with the bishops of Latin America, promised for November or December, had also not appeared.<br /><br />Perhaps it had been decided that the pope should make a more official statement on liberation theology on the spot. Nothing could be more timely than a pronouncement during a visit to the birthplace of the father of liberation theology. Gutiérrez feared that the Pope would say something that could be interpreted as condemning his theology. It would be disastrous. Nevertheless, he was ready to leave the "tower" that protected him from the siege of the press and appear at the Pope's meeting with priests and laity in the square. Once again he seemed certain that because of his native roots, as a person able to walk at night in the forest without awakening nature from its sleep, his presence would be as discreet as the drizzle that covers the roofs of Lima before dawn.<br /><br /><b>Admirers and inspirers</b><br /><br />On the way to Cuba, brothers Leonardo and Clodovis Boff and I passed through Lima in the late afternoon of September 4, 1985. We found Gutierrez in the worker parish where, together with Father Jorge, director of the Workers' Ministry of Lima, the theologian exercised his priestly ministry. We insisted that he go with us to Havana because Fidel Castro had shown a great desire to meet him. Gutiérrez was evasive, objecting that at that very moment a group of Peruvian bishops, led by Dom Durán Enriquez, was preparing a textbook criticizing his writings, which meant that he would have to concentrate on producing a kind of advance defense.<br /><br />Some time later, Gutiérrez confirmed that he had not come to Cuba in response to a request from Father Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, then general secretary of the Cuban Bishops Conference, who had been his colleague in Rome. The Cuban priest was afraid that the presence of the Peruvian theologian in Cuba would be exploited politically.<br /><br />The night after our meeting in Lima, the brothers Leonardo and Clodovis Boff and I met Fidel Castro in Havana. We handed him the letter that the theologian had sent him. When he finished, Fidel commented that he had just read <i>A Theology of Liberation</i> and said he was impressed with its scientific basis and its ethical impact. He mentioned in particular the honesty with which Gutierrez treats the issue of class struggle and the dimension of poverty. He added, with emphasis, "We need to distribute books like this to the Communist movement. Our people know nothing about this. It is harder for you to write a book like this than for us to produce a text about Marxism." A few days later Fidel declared, in the presence of Dom Pedro Casaldaliga from Brazil who was visiting Cuba, that "liberation theology is more important than Marxism for the revolution in Latin America."<br /><br />But whoever thinks that politics speaks louder in the heart of Gustavo Gutierrez is mistaken. He is above all a mystic. His most famous books, <i>The God of Life</i>, <i>On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent</i>, and <i>We Drink from Our Own Wells</i> are fundamentally spiritual, aiming to nourish the faith life and prayer of Christians committed to the people's struggle.<br /><br />For Gutiérrez, theology is secondary. The essential thing is to do God's will in liberating action. And his keen theological vision captures the presence of the Lord, solidary where He seems to be most absent, in the suffering of the poor. This suffering permeates the life of Gustavo Gutierrez himself, because his delicate health requires constant care. But he does not complain. He prefers to cry out for the poor.<br /><br />On one occasion, I spent a whole day with him at the Summer Course in Lima, where thousands of militants from Christian base communities came in search of a theological foundation. I realized that he was sad, although he had presented his class with his usual vivacity. There was a shadow on that face that lights up, happy, when surrounded by simple, poor people, dedicated to the utopia of the Kingdom. We talked and not a word of self-pity came from his lips. Only later did I hear that his mother had died that day.<br /><br />The book about Job is a disguised autobiography of Gustavo Gutierrez. From its pages comes the deep conviction that all liberation theology derives from the effort to make sense of human suffering. In pursuit of this meaning, the theologian knows that, as Clodovis Boff says, everything is political, but politics is not everything. Solidarity with the poor is not exhausted in the cause of justice; it leads us to the sphere of gratuitousness, where spiritual emptying opens the way to communion with God.<br /><br />Just as in Latin America the life of faith can not be separated from the demands of politics, so the revolutionary project should find in the Christian mystic the model for the formation of new men and women. Consequently, liberation theology can only be accused of despising the spiritual dimension by someone who does not know the long list of works that have come from the contemplation and hands of Segundo Galilea, João Batista Libanio, Elsa Támez, Carlos Mesters, Arturo Paoli, Raúl Vidales, Pablo Richard and Leonardo Boff.<br /><br />The divine stigmata burn within Gustavo Gutierrez. It is impossible to grasp the full depth of his intellectual inspiration, his prophetic role and his mystical soul without knowing those three Peruvians who are at the root of his genius: José Carlos Mariátegui, César Vallejo and, above all, José María Arguedas.<br /><br />From the communist Mariátegui, author of the classic <i>Siete Ensayos Peruanos</i> ["Seven Peruvian Essays"], Gutiérrez learned the technique of cultural cannibalism necessary to Latin Americanize all the theoretical baggage of his years of studies in Rome, Belgium, France, and Germany. From the poet César Vallejo, author of <i>Trilce --</i>&nbsp;poetry as important to modern literature as Ulysses -- he inherited the nostalgic lament of the suffering creature before the silence of the Creator: "My God, if You had been human today, You would be able to be God" (<i>Los dados eternos</i>). "I was born on a day when God was sick" (<i>Espergesia</i>).<br /><br />However, the greatest influence was the novelist José María Arguedas, of whom Gutierrez was a friend and to whom he pays tribute in many of his lectures and writings. It is interesting that he chose as the epigraph of his <i>A Theology of Liberation</i> a page from the book <i>Todos las Sangres</i> by this Quechua author, specifically the one in which the indigenous sacristan of Lahuaymarca tells the priest, "Your God is not the same. He makes people suffer without consolation ..." <br /><br /><i>"Was God in the hearts of those who broke the body of the innocent teacher Bellido? Is God in the body of the engineers who are killing 'La Esmeralda'? In the authorities who took from its owners that field of corn where, at every harvest, the Virgin used to play with her Little Son?"</i><br /><br />In November 1981, I met Gustavo Gutiérrez in Managua. There, between theological discussions with the Sandinista leaders in an attempt to help them understand the different positions of Christians regarding the revolution, what later became his book on Job was born. In it, he raises the fundamental question and asks himself: How can we talk about God in the midst of so much oppression? If we want to do theology, talk about God, he said, we must first be silent before God. From this silence, which surrounds the hearts of the poor, wisdom is born. And we must repeat with Job, in the midst of so many Latin American crosses and a deep thirst for love: "Before, I only knew you by hearsay but now my eyes have seen you." Everything in Gustavo Gutiérrez, his work and his life, converges toward this vision.<br /><br />Today, Gutiérrez is my confrere in the Dominican Order. <br /><br /><i>Frei Betto is an adviser of pastoral and social movements, author of <b>Fidel &amp; Religion</b> (Ocean Press, 2006), among other books. Gustavo Gutiérrez is the author of many books, the newest of which is <b>De Medellin a Aparecida</b> (Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, 2018)</i> Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-71018538373180234612018-07-14T16:23:00.002-04:002018-07-14T16:23:35.188-04:00Save the Date: 3rd Continental Theology Conference - Amerindia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5FeKCVievbM/W0pbJjx7x7I/AAAAAAAALN8/mid4kEsfWCsOSDAK_4tLB8iFhQ2XulsFwCLcBGAs/s1600/IIICongreso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="400" height="263" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5FeKCVievbM/W0pbJjx7x7I/AAAAAAAALN8/mid4kEsfWCsOSDAK_4tLB8iFhQ2XulsFwCLcBGAs/s400/IIICongreso.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />This conference will be in Spanish and this year's theme is "The Cries of the Poor and the Earth Challenge Us / 50th Anniversary of the Medellin Conference". Additional information in Spanish can be found on the <a href="http://congreso.amerindiaenlared.org/inicio/">conference web site</a>.<br /><br />&nbsp; <b>Date:</b> August 30 - September 2, 2018<br /><br /><b>Place:</b> Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas – UCA, Bulevar Los Próceres, Antiguo Cuscatlán, La Libertad, San Salvador, El Salvador <br /><br /><b>Registration:</b> Registration fee is $100 regular / $70 theology students. You can register electronically on the <a href="http://congreso.amerindiaenlared.org/inscripciones/">conference web site</a> and pay your fee via PayPal. See that page for what to do if you don't have a PayPal account.<br /><br /><b>Accommodations:</b> Conference organizers have compiled a <a href="http://congreso.amerindiaenlared.org/alojamiento/">list of hotels</a> all within a 20-minute walk from the university. Participants must make own lodging arrangements. Most hotel room rates include breakfast.<br /><br /><b>PROGRAM</b><br /><br /><b>Thursday August 30</b><br /><ul><li> 7:30 Accreditation and materials distribution </li><li> 8:30 Spirituality Moment - Amerindia El Salvador </li><li> 9:00 Opening - UCA Rector Andreu Oliva and Amerindia Continental Coordinator Socorro Martínez Maqueo </li><li> 10:30 <i>Snack break</i></li><li> 11:00 Testimony of Cecilio de Lora </li><li> 11:30 Generating memory of Medellin - Pablo Bonavia </li><li> 12:15 Contributions of participants </li><li> 12:30 <i>Lunch</i></li><li> 14:30 Workshops (choose one 2-day workshop and an alternate when you register): <ol><li> New church ministeries for a new model of Church - Serena Noccetti and José Antonio de Almeida </li><li> Youth for a different possible world in an outgoing church - Carlos Eduardo Cardozo and Francisco Bosch </li><li> The PanAmazonic cry demands a new face of the church - Mauricio López and Roberto Malvezzi </li><li> Present and future of the option for the poor, CEBs, and liberation theology - Geraldina Céspedes and Manoel Godoy </li><li> Communication for the encounter culture in the digital era - Susana Nuin and Oscar Elizalde </li><li> Synodality: source of inspiration for the way of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean - Victor Codina and Maria José Caram </li><li> The criminalization of the poor and victims of violence in Latin America and the Caribbean - Benjamin Schwab and the UCA Team </li><li> Lay men and woman: strength and hope of the Church in the world - Cesar Kuzma and Alejandro Ortiz </li><li> Mysticism: force that pushes joy and hope in the midst of conflict - Rosa Ramos </li><li> Justice and prophethood in the most unequal continent - Juan Hernández Pico </li><li> Migration and human trafficking - Maura Verzeletti and Carmela Gibaja </li><li> The cry of the earth and whole ecology - Tania Avila Meneses and Afonso Murad </li><li> Inside the system - Mons. Reginaldo Andrietta and Juan Luis Hernández </li><li> History workshop on Medellin - CEHILA</li></ol></li><li> 16:00 <i>Break</i></li><li> 16:30 Cultural time - Teatro del Azoro </li><li> 18:00 Global analysis of the current Latin American and Caribbean moment - Elio Gasda </li><li> 19:30 Questions </li><li> 19:45 <i>Return to lodging</i></li></ul><br /><b>Friday August 31</b><br /><ul><li> 8:30 Spirituality Moment - Amerindia El Salvador </li><li> 9:00 Testimony of Maria López Vigil </li><li> 9:30 Address: Cries and resistance of the poor since Medellin - Francisco Aquino Junior </li><li> 10:15 Contributions of participants </li><li> 10:30 <i>Snack break</i></li><li> 11:00 The Medellin event from a historical perspective - Silvia Scatena </li><li> 11:45 The Latin American episcopate and its difficult propehtic mission since Medellin - Rodolfo Cardenal </li><li> 12:30 <i>Lunch</i></li><li> 14:30 Workshops (same as on August 30) </li><li> 16:00 <i>Break</i></li><li> 16:30 Young Theologians Panel: "50th Anniversary of Medellin: What are our dreams now?" </li><li> 18:00 Testimony of Roberto Malvezzi </li><li> 18:30 Address: From Medellin to Laudato Si' - Leonardo Boff </li><li> 19:30 Questions </li><li> 19:45 <i>Return to lodging</i></li></ul><br /><b>Saturday September 1</b> <br /><ul><li> 8:30 The legacy of the martyrs - Jon Sobrino and Martha Zechmeister </li><li> 9:15 Contributions of participants </li><li> 9:30 Pilgrimage organized by the UCA Teaching Team: Crypt of Mons. Romero, home of Mons. Romero, Hospital chapel (where Mons. Romero was killed), the UCA martyrs </li><li> 12:30 <i>Lunch</i></li><li> 14:30 Testimony of Rogelio Ponseele </li><li> 15:00 The strength of the little ones in the Bible - Elsa Tamez </li><li> 15:45 Contributions of participants </li><li> 16:00 <i>Break</i></li><li> 16:30 The strength of the little ones in the experience of women since Medellin - Pilar Aquino </li><li> 17:15 Contributions of participants </li><li> 18:00 Cultural time - Yolocamba I Ta </li><li> 19:45 <i>Return to lodging</i></li></ul><br /><b>Sunday September 2</b><br /><ul><li> 8:30 Spirituality Moment - Amerindia El Salvador </li><li> 9:00 Liberating mysticism: urgency of the essential for the task of Christians today - Maria Clara Lucchetti de Bingemer </li><li> 10:00 Contributions of participants </li><li> 10:30 <i>Snack break</i></li><li> 11:00 Structural changes for a poor church committed to the poor - Carlos Schickendantz </li><li> 12:00 Contributions of participants </li><li> 12:30 <i>Lunch</i></li><li> 14:30 Closing: Proposals from this Conference for the future of Christians in Latin America and the Caribbean - Manoel Godoy and Paola Polo<br />Message from Gustavo Gutiérrez</li></ul>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-80311327218063369252018-07-14T14:29:00.000-04:002018-07-14T14:29:12.225-04:00Save the Date: 38th Theology Conference of the Asociación Teológica Juan XXIII<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_7eER7gr8o8/W0pAUATWxsI/AAAAAAAALNw/t7sVCvEdZcY8oZiD5E_beJQtePMLNcBrACLcBGAs/s1600/38conferenciadeteologia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="273" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_7eER7gr8o8/W0pAUATWxsI/AAAAAAAALNw/t7sVCvEdZcY8oZiD5E_beJQtePMLNcBrACLcBGAs/s200/38conferenciadeteologia.jpg" width="182" /></a></div>You can find <a href="http://congresodeteologia.info/">information</a> about this conference in Spanish on the conference web site. This year's theme is "Mysticism and Liberation."<br /><br /><b>Date:</b> September 7-9, 2018<br /><br /><b>Place:</b> Actos de Comisiones Obreras, calle Lope de Vega 40, Madrid, Spain<br /><br /><b>Registration:</b> 30 euros for adults/20 euros for youth. Fee can be paid in cash at the door on the first day of the conference or via a bank transfer made before 9/5/2018. For details on how to make a bank transfer, see <a href="http://congresodeteologia.info/entradas/">conference web site</a>. Lodging and meals are not provided.<br /><br /><b>PROGRAM</b><br /><br /><b>Friday September 7</b><br /><ul><li>18:30 Introduction of the Conference - Asociación Teológica Juan XXIII </li><li> 19:00 Mysticism and Politics - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adela_Cortina">Adela Cortina</a>, University of Valencia</li></ul><br /><b>Saturday September 8</b><br /><ul><li>10:00 - 11:30 Salvation and Liberation: A Sufi Perspective - <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halil_B%C3%A1rcena">Halil Bárcena</a>, Institute of Sufi Studies </li><li> <i>Break</i></li><li>12:00 - 13:30 In the Waters of the Spirit: Mysticism as Overcoming Fundamentalism - María Toscano, Pontifical University of Comillas </li><li>16:00 - 16:30 Spirituality and Youth - María Isabel Herrera and Mario Picazo,<a href="http://www.joc.es/">Young Christian Workers</a></li><li>16:30 - 18:00 Roundtable: Models of Mysticism: <ul><li>Christian Mysticism - <a href="http://anterior.eldigitalcastillalamancha.es/articulo_anterior.asp?idarticulo=angela-munoz-presidenta-de-la-asociacion-espanola-de-investigacion-de-historia-de-las-mujeres-229225">Ángela Muñoz</a>, Castilla La-Mancha University </li><li>Eastern Mysticism - <a href="https://www.nodualidad.info/maestros/javier-ruiz-calderon.html">Javier Ruiz Calderón</a>, Hindu philosopher </li><li>Simone Weil: Mysticism and Justice - Alejandro del Río, Editorial Trotta</li></ul></li><li> <i>Break</i></li><li>18:30 - 20:00 The Contribution of Silence to the Fight for Justice - <a href="http://www.waterwomensalliance.org/mary-e-hunt/">Mary Hunt</a>, theologian and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)</li></ul><br /><b>Sunday September 9</b><br /><ul><li>10:00 - 11:30 Mysticism and Liberation - <a href="http://congresodeteologia.info/2018/06/19/mercedes-barrio/">Mercedes Barrio</a>, historian and professor </li><li>12:00 Eucharistic Celebration and Solidarity Collection - LGTBI Christian Collective</li></ul>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-75708322447298655392018-07-13T15:02:00.000-04:002018-07-13T15:02:29.033-04:00Freeing Jesus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ELSl72aXiU0/W0j17E4WMbI/AAAAAAAALNk/EZ4VRwAJ9sAbmFfWI6pwjIm07rYMmW0UQCLcBGAs/s1600/jesus-encarcelado.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="289" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ELSl72aXiU0/W0j17E4WMbI/AAAAAAAALNk/EZ4VRwAJ9sAbmFfWI6pwjIm07rYMmW0UQCLcBGAs/s200/jesus-encarcelado.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>By Victor Codina (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://blog.cristianismeijusticia.net/2018/07/12/liberar-a-jesus">Blog de Cristianisme i Justícia</a><br />July 12, 2018<br /><br />In the March 2013 conclave that preceded the election of Pope Francis, Cardinal Bergoglio made interesting interventions, one of them somewhat curious and little known.<br /><br />When commenting on the text of Revelation 3:20 where it says that the Lord is at the door and knocking, Bergoglio stated that obviously the text refers to Jesus knocking at the door from outside to come in.<br /><br />But he added that he was thinking about the times Jesus knocks from within for us to let him out.<br /><br />Undoubtedly this interpretation might scandalize many Biblical scholars but it is an interesting idea because, as Bergoglio adds, the self-referential Church seeks to retain Jesus within itself and doesn't let him go out.<br /><br />To put it differently, we have enclosed Jesus in doctrines, laws, rites, temples, episcopal palaces and structures of the past. We have held Jesus prisoner for centuries in the Western, medieval, feudal, inquisitional, colonial, diplomatic, powerful, anti-modern, absolutist, bourgeois, patriarchal, centralist and elitist church of Christendom. Jesus has been locked in ecclesial structures that distance him from the poor and simple people, from children and women, from peasants and fishermen, from migrants and refugees, from all those who in all cultures and religions seek the truth.<br /><br />Jesus wants to go out to the street, to not be a prisoner of the past, to travel new roads, tread the soil, go to the borders, smell like sheep, like dust, sweat and tears, hear the cry of the people, converse, embrace, kiss, give a hand, heal, bless, speak words of encouragement, forgive, console, proclaim the Kingdom, generate hope and joy, give life, since only he possesses the Holy Spirit without measure.<br /><br />We must free Jesus from the many prisons in which we have locked him over the centuries, recover the freshness of his gospel, return to Galilee, listen to his prophetic voice against the current hypocrites and exploiters of the people, against the new merchants of the temple, regain again Jesus the Nazarene craftsman, dangerous and disconcerting, able to trust his Father, to die and rise.<br /><br />But freeing Jesus doesn't mean saying "Jesus yes, Church no," rather it implies forming a Church that is not self-referential but outgoing, evangelical, transparent, in sandals or barefoot, poor, missionary and paschal, detached from all temporal power, involved in the liberation of people and of creation, challenged by the pain of the victims, joyful with the joy of the Holy Spirit. The Church cannot substitute for Jesus; it must foster a personal encounter with him.<br /><br />Only when we have freed Jesus from these prisons and have let him go out into the world of today to listen to the people, will we be able to open the door to him, let him enter our home, dine with him and he with us.<br /><br />Bergoglio in the 2013 conclave was already announcing his future pastoral road map and the style of an outgoing Church. Perhaps because of this he was elected Pope and perhaps for the same reason others reject him today. But what is certain is that the Lord keeps knocking at the door. Does he want to come in or does he want to go out? Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-1129591839513688182018-07-05T15:39:00.003-04:002018-07-05T15:39:57.458-04:00Catholic and priest out of obedience<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xnZV1N4oElw/Wz5vQLRKEyI/AAAAAAAALNM/zCN0htWtvqI8IbfNKZjIBhcb0YaZMKnEQCLcBGAs/s1600/LuzGalilea-altar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xnZV1N4oElw/Wz5vQLRKEyI/AAAAAAAALNM/zCN0htWtvqI8IbfNKZjIBhcb0YaZMKnEQCLcBGAs/s200/LuzGalilea-altar.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by Christina Moreira Vázquez (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><i><a href="http://iviva.org/archivo/?num=274">Iglesia Viva</a></i><br />No. 274, April-June 2018, pp.101-105<br /><br /><b>Signs of identity</b><br /><br />On June 29, 2002, aboard a boat on the Danube, seven Roman Catholic women were ordained priests according to the Catholic rite by a Catholic bishop who, one year later, would transmit the apostolic succession by consecrating the first women bishops. Since then, the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, ARCWP-RCWP <sup>1</sup> has not stopped growing until reaching 250 women in&nbsp; 2017, scattered across various continents. From the hands of a woman bishop I received diaconal ordination (2013) and priestly ordination in March 2015. In both cases, I devoted my ministry first to my Christian community <i>Home Novo</i> in A Coruña.<br /><br />We know that the institutional Roman Catholic Church does not welcome our ordinations since its Code of Canon Law (Can. 1024) stipulates that "A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly." Therefore it did not take long to respond with the corresponding excommunications. We have not been asked about our motives, nor heard in defense, nor have we felt on ourselves the caring shadow of an arm that rests on your shoulder and seeks to love and understand you. Before such a legal display, the commandment to love is a poor and homeless relative.<br /><br /><b>1. Obedience from spirituality and the gospel: prophetic obedience</b><br /><br />These and other displays of little or no empathy towards us make us often wonder what is lost to a woman in this Church.<br /><br />A vocation is not chosen. It comes where and when it is least expected with its own forms and manners. The Bible gives a good account of some of them. It breaks in in the midst of daily life, it catches you working, studying, caring for sheep. Many will understand me. With a bit of luck it goes on insinuating itself until it becomes obvious; for others it manifests itself with an unbearable glare like an "event." <sup>2</sup>. Sometimes this bears a certain similarity to those occasions when Jesus, passing along the seashore, challenged some who "at once left their nets and followed him."(Mt 4:20). That was my case. Without going into detail, I can say, like Jacob at Bethel, "The Lord is here, and I did not know it." No one who has experienced this type of encounter can remain indifferent to so much effort of seduction, much less resist obeying. When Grace enters life, the sacred duty exists to care for it, be grateful for it and share it. I would also add that it is a legitimate aspiration that it be welcomed into your family of faith as a gift for the community and not as a curse. What to say when that encounter results in deep healing-metanoia, as happened with Zacchaeus? After the "get up" comes the "walk." Staying standing and quiet like a statue is the fate dictated for countless women since the first was spoken. Honor to them. When the Church invites us to "pray for vocations," I suggest that it also ask God to limit Himself to fulfilling the Code so that nobody ever again has to die with empty hands and without hope. <br /><br />And I would add, stop baptizing women now if God cannot freely address them, if they cannot freely answer Him. At some point in history, those who disregard the third petition of the "Our Father" will have to be held to account for this sin against the divine.<br /><br />I suggest the same to well-meaning people who assess and judge my discernment and condemn me without even knowing who I am. I emphasize that obeying love is the first commandment. It is in force and no theologian able to refute it has been born yet. <br /><br /><b>2. Obedience from personal conscience and mind</b><br /><br />My colleagues and I usually repeat the phrase of Peter and the other apostles -- among whom were women apostles <sup>3</sup> -- "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), without forgetting the martyrial context in which many righteous people have had to speak it since their Master. When a person risks their life for a vocational commitment, it imposes respect. No one in their sound mind takes on the penalties of the caliber that the Holy See reserves for us women priests if they haven't put their lives in the key of radical following. <sup>4</sup><br /><br />"Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of the human being<sup>5</sup>. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths...," says Vatican II (<i>GS</i> 16). To this conscience we appeal, those of us who decide to step forward and say, as Abraham responded to God even before knowing what would be asked of him, "<i>Hineni</i>, here I am." Twice I answered Him, first in Galician before my community, second in English in my global community. I do not know what the theological discipline has ascertained about human perception in the face of transcendence made manifest Presence, but I could write treatises about it.<br /><br />The moment in which the mind is setting the steps to build the action, it produces a deep humanization rooted in ancestral generations; it produces a person on their feet and ready to go out to be who they are and offer themselves to the world. It produces a joy known only to those who have tasted it. No one should be deprived of experiencing the Grace that God has reserved for them under its own non-transferable form, for their sake and that of the whole community.<br /><br />Being allowed to take the step on your own path should be a human right; that each person can get to say "I am ..." in freedom and without obstacles, is essential. If you are not you, who is breathing within you? Being fully human and enjoying that which we call dignity depends on it. Hence the special effort Jesus put into raising people up. The recovered vertical position was equivalent to forgiveness and healing. Various scenes in the gospels bear witness to this. Being fully individual seemed to be his motto first of all. <br /><br />Promising to go forward without looking back and promising to accompany those who are traveling in step with me with the testimony of the gospel and the table set, is nothing but what every conscious baptized person promises. Obeying the Lord's charge to "remember him" should not depend on the permission of an excluding structure that does not take into account the totality of the people of God and allows itself to put obstacles to their choice. They should not be punished just because of the gender or sexual preferences of the baptized person. Our human nature has already been assumed in Christ and not partially, but in its totality. There is no small print at the foot of the Cross.<br /><br />I did not allow myself to disobey any longer; 30 years had already been a long time. No man I know had to discern so much to be ordained a priest. I was not moved by "fads" or "principles of the social order of any historical period" <sup>6</sup> but by the Holy Spirit herself. Equality is not a fad, it will not pass. It is not a worldly whim, it is the will of the Creator.<br /><br />When we hear that they want to make pass for infallible doctrine the assertion that the Church cannot ordain women, I postulate as an infallible doctrine that injustice and discrimination is a sin in the category of serious violence. They will end, God willing, just as slavery ended despite Church support in its time.<br /><br /><b>3. Obeying the Church</b><br /><br />The Church should have the sacred mission of promoting the personal and community path towards the fulfillment of the will of God. We are daughters of the Church. It could be that we love her more than is reasonable since, although mistreated, we remain because she is ours and of our communities, because our baptism made us hers and we await a warm and respectful welcome from her. She is "the people of God," the Council said. We know she can change, that sometimes there are surprises, that someday she will listen to her old married priests, to the exhausted communities that no longer even know how to answer at Mass, as it once heard the voice of the indigenous people and slaves in songs of the human soul.<br /><br />When the urban communities of the first world -- and not just them -- are already self-sufficient with Eucharists without priests. When the dominant idea in many environments is that the clergy get in the way, perhaps it is urgent to listen to those who describe other ways to be Church. Communities now exist where we can perform different roles and tasks without creating submission or abuse. They will not have to step down from the altar nor will we have to go up if it is at floor level; all the people will be equidistant. <br /><br />And the people will not be starved for the Eucharist. This is, first and finally, what most propels me and comforts me in my decision. Having personally witnessed countless situations of communities separated for years from the Lord's table, I swore that that would not occur while I had these hands. These are my vows, this is my obedience, not celibacy since I have chosen to love and under all forms within my reach.<br /><br />Women deacons -- this fully current theme -- were a thoroughly proven reality, as other evidence shows that women had leadership in the early days. Archaeology, epigraphy, and the texts support both common sense and the <i>sensus fidei</i>. Christian women give equal faith testimony, their blood flows red in martyrdom just like a man's, and always has. And we haven't waited for any commission or ordinations for that. And if our ministries are to be legalized in the end, I would ask that rose-colored formulas with bows not be invented, non-sacramental forms that set us apart from the holy orders, because the <i>Ruah</i> blows just as holy when she encourages us. Today many underground forms of women's ministries are taking place that require light and knowledge. God willing, we will free ourselves from fear and our light will be put on the mountaintop like a beacon. <br /><br />When it comes to naming things, we must attend to the absolute criteria of justice proclaimed by Jesus for his Kingdom. Obedience is first to him, to the commandments of the Holy Spirit, to conscience. Service is not blind servitude to laws and mandates but collaboration of adult human beings on an equal footing, with audible and heard voices. Serving at the altar can not be for some coming with the table set and speaking the holy words, keeping for themselves the priceless gift of collaborating with the Savior in his saving task that I now know and value more than life, and, for others, changing the altar cloths, scrubbing the stones, replacing the vessels and cloths...and vanishing to the back pew.<br /><br /><b>Conclusion</b><br /><br />If we are to give witness to the world about the dignity of women, and I do not doubt that both Pope Francis and most of my brothers and sisters have this intention, the times we are experiencing in our world are decisive. Feminism is not a fad of these times, it will not pass nor should it pass as long as our full humanity is not acknowledged in words and in action. We don't want to break with anything but to enter into what exists, slowly and carefully, to bring our charisms, our voice specialized in weakness and pain, our arms sculpted by years of care and our capacity to sleep with one eye open. Everything shared in the common heritage where we, in turn, will take the symbols, clothes, rites, and words accumulated for centuries and finally everything will be fully of the <i>multitudes</i>. Yes, we even take responsibility for the rabid anticlericalism that we are already bearing without deserving it ... we have endured too much and in the end it's time to raise our heads, balance the forces and, for the wounds that have been caused, band aids are not enough. We're all needed.<br /><br />I ask the authority structures what is creating "the inability of the Church to ordain women." Because you and I know that there is not a single serious biblical or theological argument against laying hands on us. Let's seek dialogue, let's seek the holy exercise of compassion rather than coercive medieval mechanisms. With all due respect, saying to an adult person that what she wishes cannot be "because I who am your father says so," does no good now.<br /><br />It damages ecclesial communion and, moreover, it harms the image of the Church. It damages an urgent witness we must give to the world at a time when we are being killed, raped, and denigrated everywhere. It's urgent. As the Kingdom is urgent when the Word burns within you. Meanwhile there is one single enemy, a murderer: sexism. I don't want to think we have it in the house. God doesn't want it. <br /><br /><b>Footnotes:</b><br /><br />1. <a href="http://arcwp.org/en/">http://arcwp.org/en/</a><br /><br />2. María Elena Garmendia, <i>Porque soy hija de Abrahán. Sacerdocio femenino ¿un clamor del espíritu?</i> Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao, 2017.<br /><br />3. M. Perroni-Cristina Simonelli, <i>María de Magdala, una genealogía apostólica</i>, San Pablo, Madrid, 2017.<br /><br />4. Cf. <i>Normae de gravioribus delictis</i> Decree<br /><br />5. The inclusive language is my contribution; the original says "man."<br /><br />6. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19951028_commento-dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html">http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19951028_commento-dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html</a>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-83365060417011891572018-06-06T15:01:00.001-04:002018-06-06T15:01:43.716-04:00Pérez Prieto: "Ladaria's veto on female priesthood and intercommunion is shutting doors against the wind"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yCf8pSZ7siE/WxgsdMkRcGI/AAAAAAAALMs/WlPDuiSrJFg5zn67wTdSZR7l-uPb9LYrACLcBGAs/s1600/cristinaandolga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="341" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yCf8pSZ7siE/WxgsdMkRcGI/AAAAAAAALMs/WlPDuiSrJFg5zn67wTdSZR7l-uPb9LYrACLcBGAs/s200/cristinaandolga.jpg" width="126" /></a></div>By Victorino Pérez Prieto (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/opinion/2018/06/06/perez-prieto-el-veto-de-ladaria-al-sacerdocio-femenino-y-la-intercomunion-es-poner-puertas-al-viento-religion-iglesia-teologia-renovacion.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />June 6, 2018<br /><br />The cardinal prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, Luis Ladaria, has recently made two statements with which I disagree and that have stirred up immediate controversy.<br /><br />In the first -- in an article in <i>L'Osservatore Romano</i> -- he tried again to close the door on the priesthood for women: "The Church has always recognized herself bound by Christ's decision to confer this sacrament on men," he wrote. In the second -- in a letter as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- he states that intercommunion, or communion between Catholics and Protestants, "is not mature enough" to become the norm of the universal Church, particularly in the case of communion of non-Catholic spouses in mixed marriages. In both cases, his words are like shutting doors against the wind since you can't go against history. But moreover, there are powerful arguments against them.<br /><br />1. Beginning with the second of the statements made -- the one on intercommunion -- another colleague in the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Marx, archbishop of Munich and president of the German Bishops, declared himself "surprised" after the publication of the letter, recalling that in a conversation held in Rome last May, "the participating bishops were told that they should find, as far as possible, a unanimous result, in the spirit of ecclesial communion," and that this was surprising before they had found that consensus... And, what is more serious, the German cardinal pointed out that the question has effects on ecumenical relations with the other churches and ecclesial communities "that are not to be underestimated."<br /><br />The controversy is coming now because of the pastoral document of the last Plenary Session of the German Bishops' Conference, "Walking with Christ -- In the Footsteps of Unity: Mixed Marriages and Common Participation in the Eucharist." (February 2018). Over three quarters of the members of the Bishops' Conference were in agreement, but the half a dozen bishops who weren't complained to Rome.<br /><br />In fact, intercommunion refers to much more than communion between Catholics and Protestants in mixed marriages; it is the participation of Catholics in a Eucharist celebrated in a Christian community of a confession different from their own, or in a Catholic Eucharist with the participation of non-Catholics. The question is old and for years, both on the Protestant and on the Catholic side, the voices that cry out for "Eucharistic hospitality" have increased. It is about all those of us who are confessing Christians praying, speaking, serving and being able to celebrate together, despite our differences.<br /><br />But in this, much more progress has been made in the field of praxis and theology, than in the field of ecclesiastical norms.<br /><br />Intercommunion has been going on for decades, but in the theoretical doctrinal field there is still a long way to go. When you have participated in Eucharistic celebrations with brothers and sisters of a different confession, you see that there is no problem. I remember the Masses in Taizé more than 30 years ago, in which I participated with other Catholic priests and Protestant pastors. And more recently participation in the Eucharist in Skära Cathedral and in a small rural church with brothers and sisters of the Swedish Lutheran Church. Their celebrations of the Eucharist are very similar to ours, including consecration and communion (<a href="http://www.alandar.org/hemeroteca/cantar-en-tierra-extrana/una-semana-ecumenica-en-suecia/">http://www.alandar.org/hemeroteca/cantar-en-tierra-extrana/una-semana-ecumenica-en-suecia/</a>). We understood that the sacramentalized Jesus was as "present" in these masses as in what a Catholic priest would do. This can no longer be prevented; it is already a beautiful ecumenical reality.<br /><br /><b>The priesthood of women, again at the center of the debate</b><br /><br />2. With regard to the theme of the priesthood for women -- better than "female priesthood," as an aside -- Ladaria stated that he considers the "no" to women's priesthood "definitive" -- "Christ wanted to confer this sacrament on the twelve apostles, all men, who, in turn, transmitted it to other men. The Church has always recognized herself bound by this decision of the Lord, which excludes that the ministerial priesthood can be validly conferred on women." And to the cardinal "it is a matter of serious concern to see the emergence in some countries of voices that question the finality of this doctrine,"&nbsp; that "it is a truth belonging to the heritage of the faith."<br /><br />But what is a matter of "serious concern" to many other theologians and non-theologians, priests, men and women religious and lay Catholic men and women is this stubbornness of the Church in stopping women from being able to access this responsibility in the communities like men and being able to function as ordained priests in them. It is not true what the cardinal prefect says that "the difference of roles between men and women does not imply any subordination," because the possibility of accessing positions of more responsibility in the service of the Church such as it is organized today -- an organization that is more than debatable and that does not come from Jesus of Nazareth -- necessarily passes through the sacrament of Holy Orders. If women can not access it, they will not be able to be pastors or bishops or -- why not? -- popes. Many small base communities have already solved the problem their own way, although sometimes at the expense of the value of the sacrament of Holy Orders in presiding at the Eucharist, especially in the consecration, which is questionable.<br /><br />Theologian Jesús Martínez Gordo recently <a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/opinion/2018/06/02/la-im-posible-ordenacion-de-las-mujeres--iglesia-religion-papa-ratzingr-obispo-sacerdocio-mujer.shtml">recalled</a> in <i>Religión Digital</i> that the most recent position of the Magisterium with respect to the (im)possibility of women accessing ordained ministry is found in three documents "of unequal value": the <i><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df76ii.htm">Inter Insigniores</a></i> Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1976), the Apostolic Letter <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1994/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19940522_ordinatio-sacerdotalis.html">Ordinatio sacerdotalis</a> of John Paul II (1994) and the <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFRESPO.HTM">Responsum</a> on the authority of said Apostolic Letter signed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the following year (1995).<br /><br />The first is a document in which infallibility or unreformability is not involved, therefore, it does not belong to the deposit of faith. The <i>Responsum</i> on the authority of the Apostolic Letter is a text of the Congregation, its authorship is the responsibility of the Congregation and the Pope is limited to authorizing its publication. In short, the Apostolic Letter of John Paul II aims to "dispel doubts" about it and express a position against the female priesthood, but it does not have dogmatic authority either. This theologian states something obvious: "The degree of authority is lower in John Paul II's text than in those of Pius XII or of Pius IX on the Assumption of Mary and the Immaculate Conception," concluding with all the reason in the world that "seldom in the history of the Church has there been a dogmatic and canonical mess like the one laid out."<br /><br /><b>Jesus and women</b><br /><br />The truth is that in the New Testament we have no clear statement against the priesthood of women. In fact, Jesus did not ordain men or women as priests. Rather, we find evidence - corroborated by other extra-biblical writings of the early Christian churches and frescoes in the catacombs - that women also presided at the Eucharist.<br /><br />And the truth is that women have been and have returned to being priests in the Church. Not only in non-Catholic Christian confessions, where even bishops abound -- despite the rejection of some sectors that came to "move over" to the Catholic Church because of it, as was the case of some Anglican priests -- but also in the Catholic Church itself. This is the case of the <a href="http://arcwp.org/en/">ARCWP</a>&nbsp;and <a href="http://romancatholicwomenpriests.org/">RCWP</a> (Association of Catholic Roman Priests and Roman Catholic Women Priests), which already have about 300 priests and about a dozen bishops who joyfully tend to numerous communities, especially in North America but also in South America and in European countries. It is not that they want "power" like men, but to do what they have felt called to do.<br /><br />Christian communities are demanding this female service as soon as they hear about it. And the vocations of many women, responding to a well-discerned interior calling -- at least equal to that of men, and in some cases quite a bit better -- show that the priesthood of women is a reality in the Catholic Church, and that it is no more than a matter of time before it is accepted by the hierarchy.<br /><br />It is true that news like this, which comes from a man named by Pope Francis, bewilders many women and men and they question the renewal of the Church that he has been proclaiming. Above all, they still have to mourn in silence this discrimination in their Church. Others are already beginning not to be silent and to shout aloud in a prophetic voice what they consider legitimate and evangelical. "If they keep silent, the stones will cry out," the Master said. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-88712191234947591572018-06-01T12:30:00.000-04:002018-06-01T12:30:37.306-04:00"Christology and Women": A new book by theologian Consuelo Velez<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QtT_E-TXYGg/WxFxu42nzgI/AAAAAAAALL4/IPTfpHHv6i89oT9CvaB7aLjENcbpBti0wCLcBGAs/s1600/cristologiaymujer-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QtT_E-TXYGg/WxFxu42nzgI/AAAAAAAALL4/IPTfpHHv6i89oT9CvaB7aLjENcbpBti0wCLcBGAs/s200/cristologiaymujer-cover.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>By Consuelo Vélez (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/libros/2018/04/25/religion-iglesia-libros-feminismo-cristologia-y-mujer-una-reflexion-necesaria-para-una-fe-incluyente-consuelo-velez-javieriana.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />April 25, 2018<br /><br />The Javeriana Theology Faculty has just published my book "Cristología y Mujer. Una reflexión necesaria para una fe incluyente" ["Christology and Women: A necessary reflection for an inclusive faith", Javeriana <a href="http://teologia.javeriana.edu.co/noticias?aID=9626530&amp;tID=22767#.WxFl99SUs2w">Teologia Hoy No. 79</a>, 2018]. It was the fruit of a sabbatical semester but above all it is fruit of my theological and existential experience of recent years. As a woman theologian, I have not been able to be distant from a reality that is easy to verify in society and in the Church: the situation of women has changed lately but much is still needed so that, everywhere, it would be reality that because of the fact of "being women" we are not considered in a subordinate position or in second place or, worse, as sexual objects or someone's property.<br /><br />Hence the concern to contribute to keeping on changing that situation and specifically from the field of theology and faith experience. In fact Christian revelation has not propitiated this situation -- in the book of Genesis the fundamental equality of men and women is affirmed: "God made them in His own image, male and female He created them" (1:27) -- but it has allowed it and has maintained it by a bad interpretation of the Biblical text and by an accommodation to social patterns where the model has been the masculine.<br /><br />As the book cover says, it emphasizes the Christological because it's a central field in theology and, therefore, from a good Christological understanding that promotes women, a transformation of all other theological fields can emerge.<br /><br />Many aspects can be treated in Christology; in the book, I look at some that I consider relevant. First of all, I pause to contextualize the perspective from which Christology is approached. We call that perspective feminist theology. This statement has some prejudices. The word "feminist" is often identified exclusively with positions against life or with the loss of femininity. <br /><br />But we must repeat it "many times" to see if it can be understood: there are many feminisms and we are referring to the fundamental -- that movement that allowed women today to be citizens and hence we can study, occupy positions reserved for men for centuries and bring everything we are to the building of society and the church in true conditions of reciprocity and fundamental equality.<br /><br />Once this perspective is put forward, I define some fundamental terms: feminist movement, sexism, patriarchy, androcentrism, kyriarchy, femininity and gender, and then I linger on the developments that have already taken place in so-called "feminist Christology," an already long history, of decades, but quite unknown in our context. One of the values of this book is to approach with a simple language -- as is my style -- the work already done in North America and Europe but, as I have just said, very unknown in our theological centers.<br /><br />Second, I return to what is closest to our reflection and to which many theologians already refer: Jesus' attitude towards women in which his option for them and their inclusion in the group of his own is recognized quite significantly. Later I refer to inclusive language that allows naming God in masculine and feminine. That is His true face and the language -- as a living entity -- has to express it. In this sense, the title "Wisdom of God" that was left aside, privileging masculine titles such as Logos, Lord, Savior, etc., can contribute to enriching an understanding of God revealed in Jesus, inclusive of both genders.<br /><br />Another chapter in the book refers to the masculinity of Jesus. No one is denying that Jesus was male, without a doubt, and no one is claiming to change that. But you need to liberate that masculinity from an exclusively male vision to allow us women to identify with Jesus too and be able to be in his image, without being told that because we are not men we can not occupy the places that men occupy because Jesus was male. It is an interesting discussion because it greatly enriches the Christological vision and new horizons of understanding for men and women emerge.<br /><br />The last chapter refers to the cross of Christ, a theme so central to the experience of the Christian faith, but while it ought to be a redemptive and transforming sign, it has sometimes been a sign of passive resistance and resigned acceptance of the violence that is suffered. In the case of women, it has been a repeated story of the call to forbearance to save family members -- be it father, mother, brothers, husband or children --without taking into consideration that women have the right to their own lives and not for that do they stop being a good mother or a good wife or much less a good Christian. We recover the cross of Christ in its most authentic sense, showing how the cross denounces all violence against women and at no time contributes to their resignation and denial of their fundamental dignity.<br /><br />In the postscript of the book it is said that it is aimed at women who already conceive of themselves in a different way, capable of questioning traditionally assumed roles and proposing another way of being and acting. But, of course, the book is also aimed at men because, in face of women's new way of positioning themselves, they need to rethink their identity and feel called to contribute to this new social configuration that breaks with the established roles due to biological sex and builds inclusive gender identities and authentic reciprocity between the sexes.<br /><br />The invitation, therefore, is to read this book but especially to fully understand this patriarchal and sexist reality that has constituted us and of which today we are all still debtors - as Pope Francis affirms - and look for ways of transformation. Hopefully these reflections, which are limited and only explore some fields, can continue to be deepened but, above all, can be lived out to build a truly inclusive, liberating society and church, creator of communion and reciprocity among all.Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-62030426388441737202018-05-31T12:51:00.000-04:002018-05-31T12:51:58.024-04:00"If secularism is reducing faith to the private sphere, this weakens the public space": An interview with Teresa Forcades<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KweiwplZ_MU/WxAhYdiL2hI/AAAAAAAALLs/y4J9j8LuERoiRQ2GH47CL97K9mrpd6vQwCLcBGAs/s1600/forcades-2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="533" height="98" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KweiwplZ_MU/WxAhYdiL2hI/AAAAAAAALLs/y4J9j8LuERoiRQ2GH47CL97K9mrpd6vQwCLcBGAs/s200/forcades-2018.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>By Jonatán Soriano (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://protestantedigital.com/espana/44710/Si_laicismo_es_que_la_fe_este_reducida_al_ambito_privado_esto_debilita_el_espacio_publico">Protestante Digital</a><br />May 15, 2018<br /><br />With Teresa Forcades (Barcelona, 1966) one could talk about many subjects. Degree in Fundamental Theology from the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia, which did not validate her theological studies in the United States because of being partly Protestant, and later a doctorate with a thesis on the concept of person in classical Trinitarian theology and its relationship to the modern notion of freedom as self-determination, the Benedictine nun and doctor in medicine too has experience in public life. Specifically through the Procés Constituent platform, presented in 2013 in Catalonia with the aim of establishing a popular debate to decide what political, economic and social status is wanted for Catalonia, from a pro-independence and anti-capitalist base.<br /><br />Between 2013 and 2015, Forcades enjoyed a large media presence in the territory, while presenting the platform on a tour together with its other very prominent representative, the economist Arcadi Oliveres. In addition to her demanding discourse, she stood out at the image level, since she appeared in long pants and a veil.<br /><br />The movement was about to enter the elections to the Parliament on September 27, 2015, but an internal vote resulted in not doing so. "We lost a great opportunity," she states now.<br /><br />We're reviewing from the Faculty of Theology of the University of Humboldt (Lutheran, by the way), where she teaches, that moment of greatest public exposure.<br /><br /><b>Question: You've had a Protestant formation.</b><br /><br /><b>Answer:</b> Here we aren't so accustomed to it because the Spanish State is one of the most negative examples of Christian ecumenism. Protestantism has not had the recognition that it has in other countries and, therefore, the formation is viewed as dichotomous. I have moved a lot through the United States and Germany and that doesn't occur to them because the theological formation is incorporated in the university and the easiest thing is that you have professors who can be Catholic as well as Protestant, and not even know it. My training is first extra-academic, because of the interest I had while studying medicine in Barcelona and through the <a href="https://www.cristianismeijusticia.net/es">Cristianisme i Justicia</a> studies center. That was before the official formation. Then I went as a doctor to the United States and there I began to study at the Catholic seminary of Western New York. I completed the first two years of what would be the degree, which is known there as "Master of Divinity." At the end of those two years I got a scholarship to go to Harvard, which has considered itself non-denominational (not ascribed to any religious confession) for years, despite having been founded in the seventeenth century by Methodists. They are interested, above all, in the possibility of Christian ecumenism and interreligiousness. At Harvard, the formation was divided into three blocks. The first was philosophy, the second was focused on the Bible, and the third on interfaith dialogue. There were Catholic teachers but they were a minority. In fact, I think I only had two. We are talking about the years between 1995 and 1997, and at that time the Harvard Divinity School was part of the Theological Institute of Boston, along with the Episcopal Theological School, the Holy Cross Orthodox School of Theology, the Jesuits' Boston College and the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. This, in practice, meant that in all of them you could do cross registration, that is, they gave you the degree of the institution with which you had 50% of the training and in my case it was Harvard, although I took classes in all the others because I had a very big interest. Therefore, my first degree in theology is non-denominational. <br /><br />This caused that, when I returned to Barcelona to enter as a nun and I wanted to do a degree specializing in Catholic theology and then a PhD, the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia told me that they couldn't validate my studies because they were from a Protestant university. My reaction was to do a medical doctorate, because I didn't want to sit down again in the first course to be taught who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were&nbsp;. Later there was a change in the Dean of the Catalan faculty and a Jesuit took office, so I wrote to the Jesuits with whom I had studied in the United States so that they would inform those in Catalonia that they would indeed recognize my degree. Finally, the faculty did not recognize the degree but I had the right to take an exam to demonstrate my knowledge. I'm explaining all this to make clear the difficulties of theological dialogue that we still have. In the end they agreed to give me an exam for which I had to prepare 50 subjects, although I would only have to be examined on one between two chosen at random, which were "Easter" and "justification by faith." I chose "justification by faith" because I had studied in a largely Protestant faculty. From there, I was able to do a specialized degree in Fundamental Theology, which deals with the dialogue between faith and philosophy, with contemporary thinking and all those questions that aren't limited to dogmatic discussion but have to do with apologetics.<br /><br /><b>Q: How has that Protestant formation influenced you?</b><br /><br /><b>A:</b> The perspective that I found at Harvard didn't have the ecclesiological institution element as something central, so important in the Catholic tradition, but the search for the sense of faith at the individual level, which has been characteristic of Protestantism throughout the years. That confronting, asking what you think, how you live and what God is for you. These questions have also existed in the Catholic tradition but have not characterized its perspective. To me this seemed liberating, very appropriate for a 21st century Christian faith that, inevitably, should have that personal component. <br /><br />Also the study of biblical languages so in depth. In Catholicism it is also studied, but the mastery of Greek and Hebrew isn't presupposed in Catholic theology if you don't devote yourself to being a biblist. This preponderance of the original languages is something that I would not have today had I not studied at a Protestant faculty.<br /><br />When I was working as a doctor in New York, I decided to attend a Protestant Episcopal church instead of a Catholic one. It's not that I had a crisis of faith, but that I wanted to open my mind. There I attended three years and one of the great novelties was to see a woman presiding. I looked around to see what faces the men were making, in case they were upset, but no one seemed to be because it was normal. In addition to being a pastor, Susan was a clown in the children's section of a hospital, so she had an intense communicative capacity, and for me it was very important to know her. <br /><br /><b>Q: But you have not considered being a Protestant.</b> <br /><br /><b>A:</b> No. At fifteen, I read the gospel and for me it was an experience of conversion. Then I read Leonardo Boff and <i>Liberation Theology</i> and <i>Las Moradas</i> by Saint Teresa and I was completely in love, and am up until now. It's like feeling in continuity with a whole tradition that has been one of political commitment to social justice and, later, the mystique of having your eyes open and touching the ground with your feet. In just one case I thought about becoming a Protestant. Specifically a Quaker. I was moved by the actions of Margaret Fell and George Fox in the 17th century. I have never known a Quaker community but that trajectory of pioneers in the field of pacifism, in humanizing prisons, in community instead of individual biblical interpretation without being mediated by some power structures that are distant, in the rights of women ... all this impressed me, although it didn't provoke a serious consideration of the abandonment of Catholicism, which I have rooted in my heart. <br /><br /><b>Q:</b> <b>Change of subject. How has the Procés Constituent experience been to date? </b><br /><br /><b>A:</b> From the beginning it has been a cause for controversy because I was dressed as a nun and with a veil. Controversy between some members of Procés Constituent but, above all, with other groups with whom we entered into alliances or political conversations. There were people for whom the fact of being dressed as a nun -- and being one -- was a factor of trust, and for others, it was a contradiction due to the fact of being on the left. In our country, there are people who think that, because of being on the left, we should be against religions in general, but very specifically oppressive religions, which is the view that has been held about Catholicism because it has had, and still has power. The most acute part of this tension was experienced at the time I said I would go up for the elections (to Parliament on September 27, 2015). There were people who didn't accept it because they thought that going up for an election was something unlike a nun. It's not that I considered it proper for a nun, but it was an exceptional and temporary event. In fact, this had already happened during the democratic transition with parish priests who became mayors of towns. In my case, it was not only the factor of belonging to a religious community but also the factor of being a woman and a religious. <br /><br /><b>Q: And now, would you fit into politics?</b> <br /><br /><b>A:</b> No. But I didn't fit then either. It wasn't about entering the party game, but about promoting a popular constituent process. I'm very skeptical of party politics. A democracy reduced to parliament seems to me a shame. It's not about which party you like or which one you feel good in. The motivation, in my case, was the conviction that in Catalonia there was an opportunity to promote a reflection at the popular level about the definition of a new constitution and the relationship that one wants to have with the Spanish State. But we didn't want to take advantage of it. The idea of participatory democracy instead of an exclusively representative democracy is advancing in some countries but it's one of the main challenges for Western democracies. <br /><br /><b>Q: How do you perceive the current approaches of secularism?</b><br /><br /><b> A:</b> When I was at Harvard, public theology had become fashionable, which has to do with theological reflection taking place in the public space. And I totally agree with this approach because I was also trained in it. If secularism means relegating faith to the private sphere, not because the person chooses so but because that's how it's regulated, I believe that this is incompatible with Christianity and the other great religions. If it is believed that the condition to have a plural society is that faith is reduced to the private sphere, I think that this weakens the public space and implies a violation in terms of rights. But it is also impossible for there to be cohesion and social development because this is a substantiation of non-religiosity. That is to say, from a point of view of ethical and political reflection, an artificial identity of the citizen is being constructed. The citizen is allowed to be in the public space according to the criteria that the State says. This is closer to totalitarian thought. <br /><br />In the United States, I was in consultation with a colleague who wore a yarmulke, another with a Sikh turban, and a colleague wearing a veil. That was normal and we were visiting a public hospital. We were showing our beliefs in the public space and, for me, it was an enrichment. <br /><br /><b>Q: What do we have to move towards?</b><br /><br /><b>A: </b>I'm arguing for the public character of theology and religion in a secular context conceived as a separation between religious institutions and the State. I'm interested in the arguments of John Locke about what the separation between Church and State means. Locke defends this separation, but reaffirms that the State can "judge religions" even if it is to declare them all equally valid. Maybe they are or maybe they aren't, but it's not the State that should determine it. How can a representative of the State argue with philosophical consistency that all religions are equal? The State can't be put above religions but it must guarantee that this debate can take place without favoring one religion to the detriment of the others. I think this is the idea that can help us most today. <br /><br />On the other hand, we have the French Revolution and the Goddess of Reason who substantiates, in the name of the State, a notion of good. And the notions of good we must build among all, in a plural society, but avoiding the possible imposition of some over others. If we need something at the social level, it's the motivation toward personal sacrifice for the common good, but that's not so easy to achieve. It can't be presupposed. Throughout history there have been national or nationalist motivations or religious motivations that have led to facing up to injustice. Religion has played a role in the capacity for social cohesion. Getting to that is the challenge of 21st century society, but it's not done by relegating religion to the private sphere.<br /><br /><b>Q: But the reality is not very hopeful at this time.</b><br /><br /><b>A:</b> In our context there is a struggle of privileges, still established, of the Catholic Church with the Spanish State. There is still the 1953 concordat with the Vatican. There is a government that gives medals to the Virgin and that shapes the public presence in such a way that it reminds us of that alliance of the past. On the other hand, there are city councils and political representatives who rebound against this and act in a prepotent or discriminatory way against religions in general and, very particularly, against Catholicism.<br /><br />It's an interesting moment because it's a moment of transition. It's necessary to find a way to make this debate public and alive because it's a moment in which, as a society, we can orient ourselves in a new way. After 40 years of National Catholicism that was about disparaging other religions and Christian traditions, then came the rebound, a relative one because the concordats are still there, and now we're in a moment where there are voices for a secularism that I don't I think is positive because it aims to promote and defend from the institutions a model of an areligious citizen.Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-8951741127994549042018-05-30T11:49:00.001-04:002018-05-30T13:02:57.942-04:00Toribio, a cardinal who smells of sheep and mines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9rQN4oL470Y/Ww7H_GlF1ZI/AAAAAAAALLg/3STWjXW_5G89vNXPL_0nKU1xGxPeH7oaQCLcBGAs/s1600/ToribioTicona.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="690" height="150" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9rQN4oL470Y/Ww7H_GlF1ZI/AAAAAAAALLg/3STWjXW_5G89vNXPL_0nKU1xGxPeH7oaQCLcBGAs/s200/ToribioTicona.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>By Victor Codina (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/opinion/2018/05/23/toribio-un-cardenal-que-huele-a-oveja-y-a-mina-iglesia-religion-dios-jesus-bolivia-papa-cardenal.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />May 23, 2018<br /><br />On Pentecost, Pope Francis named 14 new cardinals, many of them from marginal areas. Among them, Toribio Ticona, a Bolivian emeritus bishop from a poor peasant jurisdiction who, before being bishop, was a peasant, bootblack, miner, bricklayer, and newspaper vendor.<br /><br />Many were surely surprised with this nomination that breaks the traditional image of cardinal princes of the Church, members of noble families and bishops of great world capitals. Toribio responds to another image, that of the poor and simple pastor, always close to the peasant and mining people.<br /><br />I have met him several times and I especially remember an occasion when he invited me to a meeting of the Church Base Communities in the mining district of Siglo XX. Toribio was the one who served at table.<br /><br />This nomination is not casual; it responds to Francis' concern to reform the Church, to go back to a poor Church and for the poor, a Church that goes out to the borders and is a field hospital, where the pastors aren't taskmasters or feudal lords, but servants who smell of sheep, who break recalcitrant clericalism and build a Church People of God.<br /><br />This designation is also a criticism of a society that builds walls to defend itself from poor migrants and where the representative of the most powerful country calls foreign immigrants "animals", a world where wealth, consumption, prestige and power are valued, and one escapes with the "bread and circus" of princely weddings and spectacular sports championships.<br /><br />In the face of this false and unjust world, Toribio's nomination means that there are other values more important in life, such as honesty, work, simplicity, justice and solidarity with the poor.<br /><br />Finally, this nomination reminds us of the gospel of Jesus who came not to be served but to serve. He washed his disciples' feet and said that the most important in the Kingdom of God are the little ones and the poor. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-73639704877164663142018-01-18T17:08:00.000-05:002018-01-18T17:08:13.806-05:00Pope Francis' teaching seems made for what Peru needs todayBy María Rosa Lorbés (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gr7K7zTM15s/WmEXBayDeUI/AAAAAAAALLE/ojPZMbCVtPUMRn0qE8v9scuRhBazBjggACLcBGAs/s1600/Miguel-FeyAlegria-2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="300" height="134" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gr7K7zTM15s/WmEXBayDeUI/AAAAAAAALLE/ojPZMbCVtPUMRn0qE8v9scuRhBazBjggACLcBGAs/s200/Miguel-FeyAlegria-2017.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://observatoriosocioeclesial.pe/el-magisterio-de-francisco-parece-hecho-para-lo-que-el-peru-necesita-hoy/">Observatorio Social-Eclesial</a><br />December 15, 2017<br /><br />Miguel Cruzado, a Jesuit from Piura, receives us to talk about the Pope and his upcoming visit. Father Cruzado, despite his youth, has had a distinguished career in the Peruvian and universal Church. He was the provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Peru in 2010 and several years later was named by the Father General as his General Counselor and Regional Assistant for Southern Latin America and had to move to the Jesuit General Curia Community in Rome. He returned again to Peru and was just named director of <a href="http://www.feyalegria.org.pe/">Fe y Alegría</a> a few days ago.<br /><br /><b>What do you think is the most important aspect of the Pope's visit? How do you feel about this great ecclesial event?</b><br /><br />It makes me very enthusiastic because I think it's very important that some of Francis' central themes be developed, heard and debated in Peru, both in the Church and in society. There are societies, hemispheres, realities where Francis' teaching, although important, may not seem urgent. In Peru, it goes to the heart of what we're experiencing today -- the importance of Christian discernment in a church with pastors who don't accompany their faithful very much, the situation of the poorest in the face of the naturalization of social inequalities, public responsibilities in the midst of the tremendous ethical crisis that we are experiencing today. It's as if Francis' teaching were made for what Peru needs now.<br /><br /><b>At this moment, before the coming of the Pope, people are looking more towards the Church; it's in the display window. What do you think the average Peruvian sees when he looks at that Church?</b><br /><br />Unfortunately, I believe that in recent years the Church, myself included, has been moving away from real life, from the important issues of people's lives. Especially the poorest and the youngest. In fact, as we know from various studies, the ones who leave the Catholic Church are the poor and the young adults. We're losing people because we don't have a message that's close to their lives.<br /><br />It concerns me not only because they are the majority of the population in our country, but also because they are the ones who we want to accompany especially as Church. God is without a doubt in the working class and youth worlds of Peru; their alienation from the Catholic Church expresses our inability to hear Him and recognize Him in their midst. Alienating ourselves from the lives of the people is alienating ourselves from God Himself.<br /><br />We have reached a point where we aren't even controversial; we arouse more indifference than debate. Not only are we decreasing, we are, moreover, less and less relevant to people's lives. For example, for young people with future reference points, for families with openness to the challenges of distances and ruptures between their members, special situations that are sometimes painful, for professionals with criteria to discern ethical life, the political and economic options in society. The Church is a weak voice among many others, one that is losing legitimacy, mostly it's not even a voice that is sounding.<br /><br /><b>We need Pope Francis...</b><br /><br />In that sense, I think that the Pope's visit could help us to focus as Church on the relevant issues we are experiencing as a society. The Pope has something of this spiritual grace of a pastor who feels and acknowledges what people are experiencing, and reacts to it. I think Francis will get what we are experiencing in Peru and know how to respond to what we need to attend to today from the Gospel. Even though he comes with already prepared texts, you have to also pay attention to his spontaneous words, the unforseen reactions. That's where we should be revitalized as the Catholic Church, since they aren't idle reactions for a photo, a video, they're reactions of someone who feels what the people are living, linking it to what is most authentic in Christian tradition, the Gospel.<br /><br /><b>So, as believers and as citizens, what should we expect from this visit -- to be content, unsettled, or called to change?</b><br /><br />I hope and am convinced, because of Francis' charisma and because he knows Peru, that this visit can give us back a bit of hope, both to the Church and to society. We're a bit down as Church and society. We've been hit again and again. The corruption is showing the worst of us. We don't recognize clear voices that help us orient ourselves as a nation. In the Church, we haven't had a clear word, in which we recognize ourselves as a community, in a while. I think the enthusiasm and joy with which Francis lives can help us lift our gaze to renew ourselves and seek common horizons.<br /><br />But Francis is coming for a few days. What he can awaken will depend on how the people, all of us, receive the message. It will depend a lot on how the media, pastors, opinion leaders take the key points from Francis' message and promote them to make decisions. The Francis effect depends on Peruvians the day after Francis leaves. It will be very important to get what the Spirit is saying to us during the visit so that it later becomes messages to develop. That's why the "reception" of Francis is very important. "Reception" is a theological concept that implies not just listening but also interpreting for one's own life and putting into practice.<br /><br /><b>Because of what we've been saying, what do you think the Peruvian Church should do to respond to the Pope's invitation to be a poor Church and for the poor?</b><br /><br />It's true that the Church's public voice is losing importance, but at the level of people's daily life, the Church in Peru, thank God, has thousands of laypeople -- men and women, men and women religious, who are this "field hospital Church" that Francis wants. A Church that welcomes people, listens, heals, that doesn't discriminate and helps us to be a little more human and therefore more holy. Unfortunately these things aren't public and appear as movements, partial or private initiatives; they aren't seen as the most visible face of the Church.<br /><br /><b>In the face of what you're saying, there is in effect a public opinion that doesn't know what the Church is doing at the service of society, sometimes in the most remote corners, a Church that serves the poorest.</b><br /><br />I believe that the Church in Peru has a tradition that has become invisible. A tradition of closeness, solidarity, involvement with the poorest and with the working class worlds of Peru, with what is most authentic in us as a nation. It has been made invisible by people who haven't understood it, by narrow political viewpoints, by fearful theological opposition. However, it must become visible because it is real, it exists. It is the Church without communiqués or declarations, the everyday one.<br /><br />In Fe y Alegría alone, we're talking about 43 religious orders and thousands of laypeople -- men and women -- committed to the education of the poorest in Peru. Half are religious, but the other half are laymen and women, teachers who direct the best public schools in Peru and sometimes have better evaluations than others from private schools in the country. How many health missions to people in indigenous areas carried out by religious, laymen, laywomen, there are in Peru -- tens of thousands. The work for people's rights as well. For example, on the issue of equality between men and women and stereotypes and gender equality, the huge work that is being done and has always been done for the rights and defense of women and girls has not been made visible. It is organized by lots of Christian organizations in Peru, above all in the most wounded areas, where there is the greatest danger. That work didn't begin now, but has been going on for decades.<br /><br />Today more and more men and women are becoming aware of the role of women and many Christians have collaborated, contributed, and are working on this daily, but it's not visible. Christian voices are&nbsp; becoming more visible and they're in the newspapers, sometimes of our pastors, who instead view with mistrust all these efforts for equity and women's rights for which so many have been fighting for decades, long before these debates began.<br /><br />So there is a Church that is close to the people, to the poor, to the most typical of the country and that, moreover, knows how to discern. Being a Christian isn't applying a few rules to fulfill them, it's believing and listening to God. These people who are close to poor people are discerning, trying to listen to what God is saying and asking from people's lives. That is believing in God, not just applying rules, but always thinking about what God is asking of me in this situation. Francis asks us to be a Church on the borders that discerns. That's why I do believe that Francis will help us to know more about this rooted, massive Church, close to the poor, to its own and that is discerning and is linked to so many people.<br /><br /><b>Making that Church visible is important, and above all, because through this it will be placed at the center of the public agenda, the social problems, the debates that the country doesn't raise.</b><br /><br />Yes, above all because it allows you to get closer to the fundamental problems of the country's reality. We have been making the gospel dialogue with the culture, looking for ways to believe and recognize the seeds of the gospel that are proper for Peru. That Church not only works hard but has a word, a theological and spiritual reflection. A Church that discusses fundamental issues in the lives of people. Unfortunately these issues are not always picked up by our pastors, by us priests. We have become too formal and fearful. We are afraid, for example, of talking about the inequalities that exist in society. It seems normal that some Peruvians are condemned to a very low quality education. That is not normal, it's not good and it has been taken as normal. We are afraid to question gender stereotypes that do so much harm. And we contribute to normalizing inequalities between men and women. I hope the Pope helps us lose that fear a little.<br /><br /><b>Father, you're one of the few Peruvians who knows the Pope. I would like to ask you, what's he like? What would you say about him? How is Francis up close?</b><br /><br />The first thing that struck me is that he is attentive to the people around him. He captures details of people. Suddenly, a group approaches that doesn't know what to say and it's as if the Pope has guessed. He reacts naturally, he's not silent, he's not suspicious. He intuits people, he has that grace of a pastor close to people. <br /><br />Another trait is that, just as he's close he is also very demanding. He encourages us to continue the good we might be doing but also raises high challenges. That's how he is with everybody, with every order. He raises big challenges. His closeness isn't a cheap closeness, it's an expensive, demanding grace. What's surprising is that nobody feels offended, but rather recognized. We feel his trust. He knows we can go further.<br /><br /><b>The Pope has already made various trips to Latin America. Did any of his comments on his return strike you?</b><br /><br />He always comes back happy from his trips in Latin America. And before the trips, yes, one senses that spiritually the Pope is preparing for something decisive. Which you see in the messages he gave when he arrived at his destination. In Latin America, Francis has said things that will always be remembered. He has opened immense doors for the universal Church teaching. Like what was said in Ecuador to indigenous people, in Bolivia to the popular movements, in Paraguay to women, in Colombia to a divided society.<br /><br /><b>Thank you, Father Cruzado. Do you want to add anything more?</b><br /><br />I'll add something as an educator. Francis has had a message every year for educators. He has stressed a complete education for all, that helps people and communities to grow. The school, he has said, is like a small Church in which you grow, you discern, you are welcomed. I hope he challenges us in that respect in Peru and that we move beyond an instrumental view of education, just as techniques to offer and as a place for training people, that he helps us reassess the central role of the teacher in society in general.Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-66752484820877335462017-12-23T18:03:00.000-05:002017-12-23T18:03:22.460-05:00At a moment in history, the center of everything is in a woman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KdSAwIApGA/Wj7fZgCZmCI/AAAAAAAALKk/klkHvgrDjhAT4lS_I-_D_sUK7hkRF-bfACLcBGAs/s1600/guadalupe-pregnant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="819" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KdSAwIApGA/Wj7fZgCZmCI/AAAAAAAALKk/klkHvgrDjhAT4lS_I-_D_sUK7hkRF-bfACLcBGAs/s200/guadalupe-pregnant.jpg" width="171" /></a></div>By Leonardo Boff (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="https://leonardoboff.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/num-momento-da-historia-o-centro-de-tudo-esta-numa-mulher/">Leonardoboff.com</a> (em portugües)<br />12/17/2017<br /><br />The Christmas holiday is wholly focused on the figure of the Divine Child (<i>Puer aeternus</i>), Jesus, the Son of God who decided to dwell among us. The celebration of Christmas goes beyond this fact. Restricting ourselves to him alone, we fall into the theological error of Christomonism (Christ alone counts), forgetting that there are also the Spirit and the Father who always act together.<br /><br />It is worth highlighting the figure of his mother, Miriam of Nazareth. If she had not said her "yes," Jesus would not have been born. And there would be no Christmas.<br /><br />As we are still hostages of the patriarchal era, it prevents us from understanding and valuing what the gospel of Luke says about Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the energy (<i>dynamis</i>) of the Most High will pitch His tent over you and therefore the Holy Begotten One will be called the Son of God."(Lk 1:35)<br /><br />Common translations, dependent on a masculinist reading, say "the virtue of the Most High will overshadow you." Reading the original Greek, that is not what is said. Literally it states: "the energy (<i>dynamis</i>) of the Most High will pitch His tent over you (<i>episkiásei soi</i>)." It is a Hebrew linguistic idiom meaning "dwelling not transiently but definitively" upon you, Mary. The word used is <i>skene</i> meaning tent. Pitching a tent over someone (<i>epi-skiásei</i>), as the text states, means: from now on Mary of Nazareth will be the permanent bearer of the Spirit. She was "spiritualized," that is, the Spirit is part of her.<br /><br />Curiously, St. John the Evangelist applies the same word, <i>skene</i> (tent), to the incarnation of the Word. "And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us (<i>eskénosen</i> -- it is the same basic verb), that is, he lived permanently among us.<br /><br />What conclusion do we draw from this? That the first divine Person sent into the world was not the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. It was the Holy Spirit. The one who is third in the order of the Trinity is first in the order of Creation, that is, the Holy Spirit. The receptacle of this coming was a woman of the people, simple and pious like all the peasant women of Galilee, named Miriam or Mary.<br /><br />In welcoming the coming of the Spirit, she was raised to the height of the divinity of the Spirit. That is why the evangelist Luke rightly says: "Therefore (<i>dià óti</i>) or because of this the Holy One will be called the Son of God" (Lk 1:35). Only someone who is at the height of God can bring forth a Son of God. Mary, for this reason, will be deified similarly to the man Jesus of Nazareth who was assumed by the eternal Son and thus was deified. It is the eternal Son incarnate in our humanity who we celebrate at Christmas.<br /><br />Behold, at a moment in history, the center is occupied by a woman, Miriam of Nazareth. In her is working the Holy Spirit who dwells in her and who is creating the holy humanity of the Son of God. In her are present two divine Persons: the Holy Spirit and the eternal Son of the Father. She is the temple that houses both.<br /><br />Our Lady of Guadalupe, so venerated by the Mexican people, with mestizo traits, appears as a pregnant woman with all the symbols of pregnancy of the Nahuatl culture (of the Aztecs). Every time I went to Mexico, I mixed with the crowds who come and visit the beautiful cloth image of Guadalupe. Dressed as a friar, I often would ask an anonymous pilgrim, "Little brother, do you worship the Virgin of Guadalupe?" And I always received the same answer, "Yes, little friar, how can I not worship the Virgin of Guadalupe? Yes, I adore her."<br /><br />The devotee answered rightly, for in this woman two divine Persons are hidden, the Son who grew in her womb by the energy of the Spirit that was dwelling in her. And both, being God, can and should be worshiped. And Mary is inseparable from them, so she deserves the same worship. Hence the inspiration for one of my most read books, <i>O Rosto materno de Deus</i> (Vozes, 11th ed., 2012. In English translation as <i>The Maternal Face of God</i>, Collins Publications, 1989).<br /><br />I have always lamented that most women, even women theologians, have not yet assumed their divine portion, present in Mary, by the work of the Holy Spirit. They remain with just Christ, the deified man.<br /><br />Christmas will be more complete if, together with the Child who shivers from the cold in the manger, we would include his Mother who warms him, supported by her husband the good Joseph. He would also deserve a special reflection, something I have already done in these pages of <i>Jornal do Brasil</i>: his relationship with the heavenly Father.<br /><br />In the midst of the crisis of our country, there is still a Star like the one of Bethlehem to give us hope and a Woman, bearer of the Spirit that inspires us to find a saving way out. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-30732396394724072992017-12-23T16:26:00.000-05:002017-12-23T16:55:12.153-05:00The domesticated Gospel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7dLb7LGXlZg/Wj7Qq9xDrTI/AAAAAAAALKU/W4U1QF5Vg78Sq9vZnEGhxHPlfo5Tl9vnACLcBGAs/s1600/cesta-de-navidad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="300" height="193" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7dLb7LGXlZg/Wj7Qq9xDrTI/AAAAAAAALKU/W4U1QF5Vg78Sq9vZnEGhxHPlfo5Tl9vnACLcBGAs/s200/cesta-de-navidad.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>By Victor Codina (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><i><a href="http://blog.cristianismeijusticia.net/ca/2017/12/19/el-evangelio-domesticado">Blog de CJ</a></i><br />December 19, 2017<br /><br />We often discard gospel texts that are hard for us to understand. For example: that what we do to the poor, we do to Jesus, that the mysteries of the Kingdom, hidden from the wise and prudent, have been revealed to the little ones, that in the Magnificat it is said that God has put down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly, that in the beatitudes it is proclaimed that the poor are blessed and a "woe to the wealthy" is delivered, that God prefers mercy to sacrifices ... It even seems right to us that the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son did not want to participate in the festive feast.<br /><br />Nor does it persuade us to hear that we have to carry the cross every day, rather we're in tune with Peter when he refuses to accept the passion of Jesus. We don't like to hear that we are to be born again, nor do we fully understand that God dwells in us, or that where there are two or three gathered in His name, He is present. Nor have we taken seriously the fact of not calling anyone father or teacher, because we call priests "father", bishops "his excellency", cardinals "his eminence", and the Pope "his holiness". We also don't like to hear that we have to be vigilant, because the Lord will come when we least expect it. And that resurrection business is so strange to us that we prefer to think that the soul is immortal, as the Greek philosophers and the Roman sages used to say.<br /><br />To many men it is shocking that some women anointed the feet of Jesus with perfumes and tears, that the woman with the issue of blood touched the fringe of His mantle and that a Syrophoenician woman changed Jesus' plans. Nor do they like that Jesus first appeared to women and charged them to announce the resurrection to the disciples.<br /><br />In short, we are accommodating the Gospel to our way of life, we are making the Church worldly, we are living a bourgeois Christianity, without cross or resurrection, with an "a la carte" faith. We domesticate the gospel, we mutilate it, we adapt it and make it politically correct. We have transformed Christmas into the celebration of consumption. The salt has lost its flavor, we have become pious Pharisees who fulfill external rites and norms, faith is reduced to a kind of béchamel sauce that coats the outside but doesn't transform life. Can it surprise us that many young and not so young people, men and women, are moving away from this style of Church? Is it strange that Pope Francis is talking about reforming the Church? We can not extinguish the fire of the Spirit.Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-80427680426439339542017-09-30T13:32:00.001-04:002017-09-30T13:32:26.288-04:00Jesus hated borders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mIJRwcyPkDc/Wc_TXfdPDRI/AAAAAAAALJU/x3eQyGVrvTstv0UscJFvUnZZspPzADamACLcBGAs/s1600/kikito.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="1100" height="130" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mIJRwcyPkDc/Wc_TXfdPDRI/AAAAAAAALJU/x3eQyGVrvTstv0UscJFvUnZZspPzADamACLcBGAs/s200/kikito.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by José María Castillo (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/opinion/2017/09/26/jesucristo-odiaba-las-fronteras-religion-iglesia-castillo-nacionalismo-catalunya-espana.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />September 26, 2017<br /><br />A border is the line that separates and divides one nation from another, one country from another, and often one culture from another. Therefore borders separate us, perhaps divide us, and often alienate us from one another. Hence, so often, borders make us oppose each other. It's inevitable.<br /><br />You'll say I'm exaggerating the negative. It's possible. But no one can deny that history is full of peripeteia and unfortunate events related to what I've just pointed out.<br /><br />That said, because of my professional formation (or deformation), when I see a problem or a situation like the one we're experiencing right now in Spain, in Europe and the world, I dip into the Gospel and ask myself, "Does Jesus of Nazareth teach me anything that will help guide me in what is happening?".<br /><br />Jesus gave nationalist signals. When he sent his apostles to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, the first thing he told them was not to go to the pagans or to the Samaritan cities (Mt 10:5). And to the Canaanite woman who asked him for healing for her sick daughter, he said that he had only come for the lost sheep of Israel (Mt 15:24). Scholars of these stories look for explanations for these strange episodes. Because, among other things, we know very well that Jesus greatly valued the Samaritans (Lk 9:51-56, 10:30-35, 17:11-19; Jn 4). And it's that, apparently, in Jesus' mind the "lost sheep" were precisely among his people, in Israel. Hence his emphasis that the apostles attend first of all to those who are lost and astray. Jesus' mentality wasn't nationalist. Not at all. It was a humanitarian mentality.<br /><br />So it draws one's attention that the first time, according to Luke's gospel, that Jesus went to his hometown (Nazareth), they asked him to do the reading in the synagogue. And nothing else occurred to him but to, when reading a text of the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2), just mention the "year of favor" and skip the "day of vengeance" bit. Which caused the confrontation (according to the most correct translation. J. Jeremias) of the people (Lk 4:22). And the worst was that, instead of calming his fellow citizens, he went on to say that God prefers strangers (a widow from Zarephath and a politician from Syria) (Lk 4:24-27) to his Nazareth nieghbors. That made the people furious and it was truly a miracle that they didn't shoot him down (Lk 4:28-30). Jesus hated borders to the point of risking his life to make it clear that he didn't support borders that separate and divide us. <br /><br />But this isn't what's most striking. One of the most surprising things in the gospels is that the three most notable compliments Jesus gave about faith, he didn't give to his apostles or to his compatriots or his friends. He gave them to a Roman centurion (Mt 8:10), a Canaanite woman (Mt 15:28), and a Samaritan leper who came to thank Jesus, as opposed to the nine Jewish lepers who were just satisfied with fulfilling "their law" (Lk 17:11-19).<br /><br />Jesus, on dying, "handed over the spirit" (Jn 19:30). Did he leave this life? Of course he did. But something much deeper: he "handed over" ("<i>paradídomi</i>") the "Spirit". For the 4th gospel, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, everything happened in that moment (H. U. Weidemann). And from that moment, which changed History, the myth of the Tower of Babel, the many languages, our divisions and inability to understand one another and live together as one and in peace, ended. It's the pinnacle of the Gospel. And if the God thing is good for anything, what good is it to us if each passing day it becomes more unbearable for us to live united together? Is it that Spain and Catalonia are more important than the Gospel of Jesus? From what we're seeing, for many Christians and quite a few priests, that's how it is. Or that's the impression they're giving. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-21500135966653238342017-09-30T12:03:00.002-04:002017-09-30T12:03:54.690-04:00Interview with Dom Pedro Casaldáligaby José M. Vidal (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/america/2017/09/26/monsenor-casaldaliga-preferiria-que-no-hubiese-independencia-en-cataluna-iglesia-religion-obispo-brasil-espana-papa.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />September 26, 2017<br /><br />He was always like a small thin reed, but with iron health and steel nerves. Today, at 89 years old, Dom Pedro Casaldáliga (Balsereny, 1928), the poet-bishop of the marginalized, remains a reed but doubled over by Parkinson's. From his wheelchair, he administers his silences and husbands his words which, from time to time, continue to flow like prophetic darts -- laconic and right on. He doesn't want Catalan independence, he asks young people to move on to action, and he asserts that Francis is "a blessing from God".<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CX3cDh8Q7Lk/Wc--Mipc0iI/AAAAAAAALJE/FpNVxCXqm3Mxq8s8WbRNGMfdWVatosp5wCLcBGAs/s1600/casaldaliga-angel-2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="688" height="290" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CX3cDh8Q7Lk/Wc--Mipc0iI/AAAAAAAALJE/FpNVxCXqm3Mxq8s8WbRNGMfdWVatosp5wCLcBGAs/s400/casaldaliga-angel-2017.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Padre Angel (L) and Dom Pedro Casaldaliga (R)</i></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>&nbsp;in the chapel in Sao Felix do Araguaia, Brazil</i></div></i><br /><br /><b><br /></b><b>Don Pedro, do you like to receive visits?</b><br /><br />Some, yes.<br /><br /><b>As a Catalonian and Catalonia International Prize winner, what do you think of the [independence] process?</b><br /><br />We'll see what happens with independence. I would prefer that it not be. There are wise people who are going to approach the matter differently. It's not a natural process. It makes no sense.<br /><br /><b>Did you know Tarancón [Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón]?</b><br /><br />Yes, when I was a seminarian in Barbastro and he was bishop in Solsona. He was a worthy figure with the vocation of intermediary during that difficult time in Spain.<br /><br /><b>Where do your hope and strength come from, despite everything?</b><br /><br />Relying on somebody.<br /><br /><b>Who is that somebody?</b><br /><br />It could only be Him.<br /><br /><b>What nourishes your hope?</b><br /><br />The Resurrection of Christ.<br /><br /><b>If you could change just one thing in the world, what would it be?</b><br /><br />That everyone who has power would stand in the right place: life.<br /><br /><b>And what would you change in the Catholic Church?</b><br /><br />Put power in the people's hands. Otherwise, it becomes a problem. In the Church, the crucial thing is giving one's life for others and a gospel devotion to the Beatitudes.<br /><br /><b>Did you have problems with the hierarchy?</b><br /><br />Yes, I did.<br /><br /><b>What did you do and what should be done in those cases?</b><br /><br />Continue to stand firm on the side of the poor and always bear witness.<br /><br /><b>Would you order the churches to be open 24 hours?</b><br /><br />Yes, so the people might come in, sleep, eat, and pray, if they want.<br /><br /><b>Some advice for young people.</b><br /><br />That they remain rebels with hope, despite the despair. And always on the side of the poor and excluded. We've been talking about consciousness raising for years. That time is over. It's time to act and respond to specific calls.<br /><br /><b>What do you say to Father Ángel [García Rodríguez] who came to see you from Madrid?</b><br /><br />That he keep on being a prophet and looking out for peace, which is lived out and is a process. <br /><br /><b>What do you think of Pope Francis?</b><br /><br />A blessing from God.<br /><br /><b>Are you, like him, a blessing from God?</b><br /><br />We're all blessings from God, if we are listening and if we are committed to interchange and dialogue. Because the problem is how to live daily life in the midst of this violent world.<br /><br /><b>Do you regret anything?</b><br /><br />Not having enough attitude of dialogue.<br /><br /><b>What are you most proud of?</b><br /><br />The many people who still accompany me on the journey and having given my life to the excluded, the marginalized, the little ones.<br /><br /><b>Your favorite saints?</b><br /><br />Saint Francis of Assisi (when I went to Rome, I wanted to go to Assisi to see Father Arrupe, but I couldn't).<br /><br /><b>And poets?</b><br /><br />Antonio Machado, Saint John of the Cross (his "Spiritual Canticle" comes first), Espriu, Neruda and Maragall.<br /><br /><b>Thank you very much, Dom Pedro.</b><br /><br />You're welcome. We have talked. Now it's about doing. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-31772846627259455932017-06-27T12:07:00.000-04:002017-06-27T12:07:03.503-04:00Ivone Gebara: "The hierarchy thinks that the Gospel message is a sealed package to deliver to the faithful"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kbrexblhw4g/WVKAfBcS1UI/AAAAAAAALIg/NnN0_0R-YhU_gapIOo_lfBqD_-U5-QEgwCLcBGAs/s1600/Gebara2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="378" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kbrexblhw4g/WVKAfBcS1UI/AAAAAAAALIg/NnN0_0R-YhU_gapIOo_lfBqD_-U5-QEgwCLcBGAs/s200/Gebara2017.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>by Luis Miguel Modino (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/america/2017/06/25/religion-iglesia-america-mundo-ivone-gebara-la-jerarquia-piensa-que-el-mensaje-del-evangelio-es-un-paquete-cerrado-para-entregar-a-los-fieles.shtml">Religión Digital</a><br />June 25, 2017<br /><br />Ivone Gebara is one of the main references of feminist theology of the last decades, not only in the Brazilian arena but in the world. She defines herself as a feminist liberation theologian and is aware that this stance determines how she understands Christianity.<br /><br />Her critical attitude has caused rejection in many church environments, often coming from people who do not inquire into the presuppositions that are the basis of the theological reflection of the Brazilian nun, who has always made clear on which side she stands, that of the marginalized groups within society and the Church itself. <br /><br />In this interview, Ivone Gebara shows her thoughts regarding the female world within the Catholic Church, which she accuses of being influenced more by cultural models than by Jesus Christ's own message, implying that the attempts at change Pope Francis has wanted to carry out in reference to women are actions which, in her opinion, won't give rise, for now, to anything novel.<br /><br /><b>Why is it so hard in the Catholic Church to assume a theological view from the female perspective?</b><br /><br />The Church has no difficulty in assuming the feminine from its model, that is, from its view of human relationships and the place it has determined that women occupy. In that view, there is an almost ontological priority of men in relation to women, since they are the first image of God, the one which can represent Christ.<br /><br />This theology is still the current theology and it wasn't necessarily created by the Church, but by the Greco-Roman culture that marked the formation of Christian theology. Cultural processes are very slow and involve a complexity of behaviors and motions that don't always submit to our rationalizations.<br /><br />I think it will take a long time for egalitarian anthropological change to take place in the world and in the Church.<br /><br /><b>From your point of view, what were the causes of the attempt to subject women within Christianity and later within Catholicism throughout history?</b><br /><br />I think we copied the models of other cultures and we made those models the will of God and of Jesus. And unfortunately most of the theology teaching still administered in the Institutes and Faculties of Theology, and also in the parishes, is done from a hierarchical view of human beings, not just of gender, but of race and social classes too.<br /><br />The Church doesn't change independently of the world. The Church as an institution would hardly assume a position of justice and gender equality different from that of the world. It even goes to fight the world, believing that it's obeying divine will. It doesn't ask itself whether there is in fact such an unequal and unjust divine will, whether in fact that view doesn't imply maintaining a now ultra-outdated model of power with very marked totalitarian features.<br /><br /><b>Isn't subjecting women an attitude contrary to the new that Jesus wanted to establish?</b><br /><br />Jesus wasn't a feminist. Feminism is a contemporary movement. But in Jesus' tradition, in Jesus' Movement, we find an egalitarian ethical dimension along the lines of individual rights that is an inspiration to the feminist theologies of our time. But it's necessary to have our eyes and ears open to perceive that in the Gospels.<br /><br /><b>The arrival of Pope Francis brought a new church policy in regard to women. Do you think it's enough with those new attitudes or is something more radical needed? What do you think of the proposal to ordain women deacons?</b><br /><br />I don't think Pope Francis has brought a new church policy regarding women. He's brought many important things, but not with respect to women. The female diaconate project is still in the "bain-marie", and I don't think it has the chance to get off paper and out of the meetings in which the same things are discussed eternally.<br /><br />The Pope rejects the word "feminism", the expression "gender relations", the term "feminist hermeneutics" of the Bible, patriarchalism and other interventions that are important to feminist liberation theology.<br /><br />He thinks a theology should be done for women, which shows great naiveté in relation to what we have already done in half a century of activity in different parts of the world. I believe that the changes have to take place in the communities, in the barrios, in the daily life of the people before appearing as decrees of the Pope or some bishop.<br /><br /><b>Can a Church where women are not on an equal plane with men enter into dialogue with today's society?</b><br /><br />I believe it's very hard to enter into dialogue with the problems of the world today. And this in part because the hierarchical Church, the one that holds the authority over the Catholic communities, thinks that the message of the Gospel is a sealed package that it's responsible for delivering to the faithful.<br /><br />They don't open the doors to think about Jesus' heritage for the world of today starting from an ethos of diversity, but at the same time centered on love and respect towards people. The Church's success, with rare exceptions, is still in mass devotion, in miracles, in sanctuaries, that is, in that which is expressed as religiosity that is given for people's consumption. <br /><br />I don't think this is very educational, especially in current times. It hardly meets the needs of an orphaned people for leaders and care for one another. A people where the hunger for peace and health almost necessarily leads to expecting from superhuman powers what the powers of the earth could offer.<br /><br />Unfortunately the Pope goes on creating the beatified -- men and women saints -- perhaps even half forced to do so by the conservatives who surround him. But it doesn't seem to me a good path for the growth of collective responsibility in a cruel world like ours.<br /><br /><b>Lately, you've addressed issues related to ecotheology. Should Christianity deal with this dimension as a fundamental aspect of reflection?</b><br /><br />I've worked on several issues of ecotheology, but along an ecofeminist philosophical line, starting from which I stress the interdependence of all things. This undoubtedly requires an interesting interpretation of the Bible and different theological work.<br /><br />I think the current theology of our Churches barely fixes things. In other words, it includes a fashionable theme in a theological structure from the past as if the urgent revision of concepts were not needed.<br /><br /><b>Has the encyclical <i>Laudato Si'</i> helped in this theological viewpoint? From it, is there more awareness of the importance of reflection on these aspects?</b><br /><br />The encyclical <i>Laudato Si'</i> seems to me a document with important information on issues relating to ecology and especially climate problems, but its theology is inadequate.<br /><br />In other words, its theology doesn't take up the appeals that the encyclical itself states are being made by the world today. There is an unevenness and a clash of discourses within the text itself.<br /><br />We have a long way to go and every day it's necessary to take whatever steps are possible. Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-76611199317938997322017-06-25T20:43:00.000-04:002017-06-25T20:43:25.697-04:00New reference book on liberation theology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qkkWPBgoLZg/WVBXPc8rT0I/AAAAAAAALIE/6yMwHCe7xakyQYk0IUgziy7OTEBcfcX5ACLcBGAs/s1600/DictionnaireLT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="388" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qkkWPBgoLZg/WVBXPc8rT0I/AAAAAAAALIE/6yMwHCe7xakyQYk0IUgziy7OTEBcfcX5ACLcBGAs/s200/DictionnaireLT.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>by Jacques Berset (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="https://www.cath.ch/newsf/premier-dictionnaire-historique-de-theologie-de-liberation/">Cath.ch</a> <i>(en français)</i><br />June 21, 2016<br /><br />The very first <i><a href="https://www.editionsjesuites.com/fr/livre-dictionnaire-historique-de-la-theologie-de-la-liberation-1980.html">Dictionnaire historique de la théologie de la libération</a></i> ["Historical Dictionary of Liberation Theology"] has just come out at Editions Lessius, in Brussels. This compendium of over 650 pages is coming out in a context of globalized socio-cultural and economic realities, while liberation theology (LT) was born in Latin America in the atmosphere of revolutionary effervescence of the 1970s.<br /><br />LT, which aims at an integral liberation of man, seemed to have wilted long ago, but this book brings it back into the spotlight. This new dictionary shows that the evolution of LT is still in progress. Developed at the beginning by the Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, to whom the paternity of this theological approach developed in contact with the poorest and with their participation has been attributed, LT has become widely diversified in the meantime.<br /><br /><b>The preferential option for the poor</b><br /><br />Some one hundred specialists of 28 nationalities have collaborated in the development of this dictionary which has 280 entries. These entries are the key themes, countries and people -- whether the theologians who have theorized LT or the actors who were inspired by it and put it into practice. For the authors of the book, LT is one of the rare theologies that has always wanted to act on the peoples' history.<br /><br />A large panorama of LT, from its origins to the present day, closes the book, which is edited by Maurice Cheza, a specialist in Third World theologies, Luis Martinez Saavedra, a specialist on LT in Latin America, and Pierre Sauvage, a specialist on LT in Latin America and its reception in the Western world. They have benefited from the assistance of Alzirinha Rocha de Souza, an expert on LT in Brazil, and Caroline Sappia, a an expert on LT in South America and its reception in the French-speaking world.<br /><br />One discovers through the pages that for decades LT has been addressing problems that have long been left in the shadows, always starting from the preferential option for the poor. It deals with the emancipation of women, black and indigenous people, and the question of the preservation of creation, namely ecology, thus addressing many perspectives.<br /><br /><b>The South has transformed the North</b><br /><br />Along with Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, received into the Dominican order in 2004, the Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff is considered one of the most prominent representatives of Latin American liberation theology. But the book makes it possible to discover many other less well-known players in our latitudes and from very diverse socio-cultural contexts.<br /><br />The reader may be surprised to find entries on North America (Canada and the United States) and Europe (Belgium, Spain, France, Switzerland). In fact, these countries have formed a great number of theologians and pastoral agents close to LT in Latin America. Many of their trainers went to countries in the south, especially in Latin America, some stayed there, notably as <i>Fidei Donum</i> priests. Those who returned were inspired by what they had found, trying to form basic ecclesial communities (BECs) in Europe and in North America, or groups of the same style.<br /><br /><b>With Pope Francis, a new wind is blowing on the Church</b><br /><br />Pope Francis' presence on the throne of Peter has, from the start, made a new wind blow in the Church. The Argentinian pontiff immediately wanted to be a shepherd among shepherds "permeated by the smell of their sheep." He encouraged them, from his first Chrism Mass at the Vatican on March 28, 2013, to serve the poor and the oppressed. For some time already, LT no longer provokes the same Roman mistrust, and the new generation of theologians has been clearing new fields of reflection and action.<br /><br />Indeed, the time of the <i><a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html">Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation"</a></i>, written in 1984 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is long past.<br /><br /><b>Christ, a social and political liberator?</b><br /><br />The future Pope Benedict XVI then denounced "that current of thought which, under the name 'theology of liberation', proposes a novel interpretation of both the content of faith and of Christian existence which seriously departs from the faith of the Church and, in fact, actually constitutes a practical negation." Remarks that were very well received and especially utilized by the powerful supporters of the status quo, both in the countries of the North as well as those in the South.<br /><br />For the Vatican, in an era that had not emerged from the Cold War, it was a question of warning against the deviations caused by the introduction of elements of Marxism into the interpretation of social reality. It also criticized "rationalizing" interpretations of the Bible, tending to reduce the story of Christ to that of a social and political liberator.<br /><br /><b>A theology of freedom</b><br /><br />The same Cardinal Ratzinger would, in 1986, publish a new <i><a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19860322_freedom-liberation_en.html">Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation</a></i> that, while not annulling the earlier one, completed and nuanced it. Rome was rereading LT in a positive manner by introducing the spiritual dimension of a theology of freedom. The intervention of certain leading figures of the Brazilian episcopate of the time, supporting the most visible protagonists of LT, had not remained without effect! In the same year, John Paul II would even say in a letter to the Brazilian episcopate that "liberation theology is not only timely but useful and necessary!"<br /><br />This <i>Dictionnaire</i> is intended for those who are passionate about history and theology, for those who are interested in the history of ideas as well as that of those women and men involved in the transformation of a fundamentally unjust society, sometimes at the risk of their lives. The general public has here a practical instrument for accessing the essential elements of liberation theology, which has been widely diversified and refined in a constantly changing context. <br /><br /><b>Reservations and reluctance within the Vatican</b><br /><br />The work highlights these rising generations who are working on new issues and are henceforth benefiting from some recognition from the Vatican. It is enough to recall the fundamental role played by Pope Francis in the canonization process of Msgr. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated by the right-wing death squads on March 24, 1980. The prelate, killed "in hatred of faith", according to the formula defining martyrdom, was beatified May 23, 2015 in San Salvador, mainly thanks to the personal commitment of Pope Francis ... and despite the reservations or even the reluctance (*) of certain ecclesiastical circles, both in El Salvador and in the Vatican.<br /><br />(*) "There were many in Rome, including some cardinals, who did not want to see him beatified. They said that he had been killed for political reasons, not religious ones." Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the postulator for the cause of of the late Archbishop of San Salvador, in the Jesuit magazine <i><a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/03/23/opposition-oscar-romeros-canonization-was-political-archbishop-paglia-says">America</a></i> on April 17, 2017.<br /><br /><b><i>Bibliographic Details:</i></b><br /><br />Title: <i>Dictionnaire historique de la théologie de la libération</i><br />Author: Maurice Cheza, Luis Martínez Saavedra, and Pierre Sauvage (eds)<br />Publisher: Editions Lessius<br />Publication Date: March 2017<br />ISBN: 9782872993130<br />Number of pages: 656<br />Language: French<br /><br />Read the <a href="http://www.jesuites.com/v3/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AvantproposTdL.docx?x54114">Foreword</a> here. (MS Word; in French) Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-84485381287369749142017-06-20T12:45:00.001-04:002017-06-20T12:45:46.757-04:00SAVE THE DATE: 37 Congreso de TeologíaThe Asociación de Teólogos y Teólogas Juan XXIII will host their <a href="http://congresodeteologia.info/"><b>37th Theology Congress</b></a> September 7-10, 2017 in Madrid, Spain, on the subject "Women and religion: From discrimination to gender equality". This congress is in Spanish.<br /><br /><b>LOGISTICS:</b><br /><br /><b>Date:</b> September 7-10, 2017<br /><br /><b>Place: </b>Salón de Actos de Comisiones Obreras, calle Lope de Vega, 40, Madrid, Spain<br /><br /><b>Registration:</b> You can pay in advance through an electronic funds transfer. See <a href="http://congresodeteologia.info/entradas/">Inscripciones</a> page for instructions. You can also pay at the door in cash on the first day of the conference. Participants are responsible for their own accommodations, travel, and food. The cost of registration in euros is:<br /><ul><li>Full Congress: 30€ </li><li>Saturday and Sunday: 20€ </li><li>Sunday only: 10€</li></ul><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WOdFEeKHfGA/WUlPb9pHqCI/AAAAAAAALHo/X2KspE9pGRgbcETdBR0bYtcwyHMXxRKTwCLcBGAs/s1600/37Congreso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="435" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WOdFEeKHfGA/WUlPb9pHqCI/AAAAAAAALHo/X2KspE9pGRgbcETdBR0bYtcwyHMXxRKTwCLcBGAs/s400/37Congreso.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b><br />PROGRAM:</b><br /><br />The program has not been finalized but here is what we know:<br /><br /><b>Lectures:</b><br /><br /><ul><li> 1st: "Critical analysis of patriarchal society" - Soledad Murillo (University of Salamanca and UN consultant) </li><li> 2nd: "Bodies, sexuality, and women's rights" - Justa Montero (Asamblea Feminista de Madrid) </li><li> 3rd: "Priesthood of women, patriarchy and power in the Churches" - Lidia Rodríguez (University of Deusto) </li><li> 4th: "Sexual identities and Christianity" - Krzysztof Charamsa (Polish theologian; former member of the International Theological Commission) </li><li> 5th: "Liberation theology and gender" - Marilú Rojas Salazar (Comunidad Teológica, Mexico) </li><li> 6th: "The urgency of a political spirituality" - Emma Martínez Ocaña (Theologian and psychotherapist)</li></ul><b>Roundtables:</b><br /><br /><ul><li> Women's movements: <ul><li> In Latin America -- Ana Marcela Montanaro (Carlos III University of Madrid) </li><li> In Africa -- Alicia Cebada (Carlos III University of Madrid. Responsible for training programs of Fundación Mujeres por África) </li><li> In Spain -- Beatriz Gimeno (LGBTI feminist activist)</li></ul><br /><br /></li><li>What are we doing/what are they doing with our bodies? <ul><li>Wombs for rent -- Laura Freixas (Writer) </li><li> The prostitution system -- Laura Nuño (King Juan Carlos University) </li><li> Diversity and sexual dissidence -- Violeta Assiego (Lawyer and LGBTI activist)</li></ul></li></ul><b>Communications:</b> <br /><ul><li> Men and women in MOCEOP -- Ramón Alario and Teresa Cortés </li><li> Women in the Anglican Church -- Deborah Champman (Anglican priest) </li><li> Women's Movements in Islam -- Artiqa el Yousfi (Asociación ONDA)</li></ul><br /><br /><i>Photo: Speakers (Top L-R): Soledad Murillo,&nbsp;Krzysztof Charamsa, Justa Montero. (Bottom L-R): Emma Martínez Ocaña, Marilú Rojas Salazar, Lidia Rodríguez</i>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-23338429666878957572017-06-17T16:28:00.000-04:002017-06-17T16:28:13.568-04:00François Houtart and Miguel D'Escoto -- Servants of the Oppressed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gMmRODENP-4/WUWI7iEZo6I/AAAAAAAALHI/m4X2PlhjO2c53Sxk3Rrhmn33PVYkgALIQCLcBGAs/s1600/Betto-Houtart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="364" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gMmRODENP-4/WUWI7iEZo6I/AAAAAAAALHI/m4X2PlhjO2c53Sxk3Rrhmn33PVYkgALIQCLcBGAs/s200/Betto-Houtart.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>by Frei Betto (English translation by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.gentedeopiniao.com.br/noticia/francois-houtart-e-miguel-descoto-servos-dos-oprimidos-por-frei-betto/168048">Gente de Opinião</a> <i>(em português)</i><br />June 12, 2017<br /><br />François Houtart passed away on June 6th in Ecuador. He was 92 years old and had the revolutionary enthusiasm of a youth of 20. Our last encounter was in March 2017 when I gave a series of talks in Quito at the invitation of President Rafael Correa. François went with me the whole time. We went together to Pucahuaico, where the body of Monsignor Leônidas Proaño, an indigenous bishop identified with liberation theology, is buried. The chapel at the foot of the Imbabura volcano was full of native and working class people. Houtart presided at the Eucharistic celebration. <br /><br />The next day, Rafael Correa offered us lunch. He had been François' student in Louvain, Belgium, where Houtart taught Sociology and Religious Studies&nbsp;for years to students from the periphery of the world, among whom were the Colombian Camilo Torres and Brazilian Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira who told us:<br /><br />"In 1975, I went back to Belgium to begin my doctorate. The first working meeting with Houtart, my adviser, dismantled everything I had prepared for the thesis on popular Catholicism. He said it was insufficient because it did not have a sociological explanation. To add to my astonishment, he added: 'As you should not be unaware of, only Marxist theory is really explanatory. The rest are merely descriptive.' I stumbled out of there, not understanding how a priest, who had been an expert at the Council [Vatican II], even collaborating in the writing of <i><a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html">Gaudium et Spes</a></i>, had become a Marxist without leaving the Church. Gradually I understood it: he was actively opposing the US war against Vietnam, and so he had discovered in the theory of class struggle a theoretical tool capable of elucidating what was at stake in that war, the anticolonialist movements of Africa and Asia, and the Latin American dictatorships. The best part is that he convinced me once and for all. The last time we participated together in a Sociology of Religion conference, we were the only sociologists to use Marxist tools to explain religious facts. I joked with him, asking him to take a long time to die, so I wouldn't be alone using Marx to understand religion ... "<br /><br />François was tall, he had very clear eyes and smiled easily, even when expressing, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2005, pertinent criticisms of the Brazilian government in the presence of President Lula. A slow speaker, his scientific reasoning was didactic, since he had left Europe to live in Latin America and to devote himself to the social movements of countries of our continent, Africa and Asia. In 2016, he advised the national congress of the MST [the Landless Workers' Movement] in Brasilia.<br /><br />We stayed together on several occasions when attending events in Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia. I always wondered how a man over 80 years of age found so much enthusiasm to travel around the world, often carrying a heavy suitcase with books of his, without ever complaining about lodging in a native tent high in the Andes, in an MST settlement in Brazil, or in a rice planters' hut in Vietnam.<br /><br />In his years of study in Rome, François had as a colleague a young man named Karol Wojtyla. He told me that the Polish seminarian had an obsession with learning languages. He used the holidays to travel to the regions of Europe where he would learn a new language. On one occasion he accompanied Houtart to Belgium, interested in improving his French and learning Flemish.<br /><br />One night, Wojtyla returned to the house in heavy rain. His Polish shoes had been ruined by the water. François found a Belgian seminarian who, as he wore the same size as the Pole, could give him a new pair. Decades later, now a priest, the donor of the shoes wanted to be received by Pope John Paul II. The bureaucracy alleged lack of time. When he sent a note to the pope, reminding him about the shoes, the doors of the Vatican opened.<br /><br />In 2016, Houtart invited me to Ecuador for a seminar on Pope Francis' socio-environmental encyclical <i><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html">Laudato Si'</a></i>. From the work together in those days came the publication, signed by both of us, <i><a href="http://edipuce.edu.ec/laudato-s%C3%AD.-cambio-clim%C3%A1tico-y-sistema-econ%C3%B3mico.html">Laudato Si - Cambio Climático y Sistema Económico</a></i> ("Laudato Si': Climate Change and the Economic System" -- Quito, Centro de Publicaciones, Pontifícia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, 2016).<br /><br />During the trip we made last March to the Andean region of Ecuador, François told me about his participation at the age of 15 in the resistance against the Nazi occupation in Belgium. He and a friend decided to build a homemade bomb to derail a train of Hitler's soldiers. They were unsuccessful and the attack cost him a tug of his ears from his mother. He also told me that he had more than ten brothers and sisters. A decade ago, with everyone alive, they gathered to commemorate the 1,000 years of the sum of their ages.<br /><br />During John Paul II's visit to Cuba in January 1998, Fidel invited Houtart to advise him, accompanied by Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira, the Italian theologian Giulio Girardi, and myself. These were days of intense community work.<br /><br /><b>Worker training</b><br /><br />&nbsp;In 2016, François sent me an interesting account about his formation, which I'm transcribing here in Spanish:<br /><br />"During my seminary years in Malines (Belgium), I participated in numerous meetings of the JOC ["Jeunesse Ouvrière Catholique" -- "Young Christian Workers"] in Wallonia and Brussels, during vacations. That's where I found out about the situation of the working class of that period (1944-1949). Just after the post-war period, Europe's reconstruction effort was accompanied by over-exploitation of labor, and the social conditions of young people were particularly scandalous." <br /><br />"The regional and national JOC congresses provided information on the broader framework of the economic and social situation. In addition, I was able to visit different factories and coal mines. The Belgian JOC put me in touch with the movement in France, the Netherlands, England, Germany and Spain, and little by little the international dimension also became an important part of my introduction into the world of work."<br /><br />"On many occasions, I met with Monsignor Cardijn (founder of the JOC) and was very impressed by his combativeness, his insistence on the incompatibility between social injustice and the Christian faith, and his knowledge of the lives of young workers. I also discovered the pedagogical method -- not starting from above imposing knowledge, but from below, discovering reality: seeing, judging, acting."<br /><br />"This experience prompted me to ask, after my priestly ordination, to begin studies in Social and Political Sciences at the Catholic University of Louvain. I spent 3 years there, staying in permanent contact with the JOC, following certain sections, traveling through Europe for meetings with the movement. My undergraduate thesis was devoted to the study of the pastoral structures of Brussels, having discovered, on the one hand, their absence in the working class environment, and on the other, the identification of Christian religious culture with bourgeois culture, creating a divorce from the working class and, in particular, young people."<br /><br />"During the last year of my studies in Louvain, I was the chaplain of the Young Workers Home in Brussels, a service of JOC for youth who had faced Juvenile Justice."<br /><br />"On the European level, I had the most contacts in France, particularly in the Paris region -- St Denis and other suburbs. I became friends with some worker priests, and I even stayed in their homes."<br /><br />"After getting a scholarship at the University of Chicago (1952-1953), to continue studying Urban Sociology and the Sociology of Religion, I lived in a parish where I worked as chaplain for JOC in the city. It was also the occasion of many meetings with JOC in the United States. During Easter vacation in 1953, I went to Havana to attend a JOC Congress of Central America and the Caribbean where Cardijn was present. I was able to have meetings with the local sections and meet with the national chaplain of Cuba. That put me onto the Latin American problem which I had wanted to know about for some time. After the congress I accompanied the JOC chaplain of Haiti to Port-au-Prince and I spent a week in the country in visits and meetings with the Haitian movement."<br /><br />"Then I gave classes for a semester at the University of Montreal, and also participated in the activities of the movement. From there I moved again to Latin America and for 6 months I traveled to almost all the countries, from Mexico to Argentina, always with JOC, thanks to contacts made during the international congresses. It was a great learning experience, discovering the continent from below. Once more I discovered the chasms between the rich and the poor and the unbelievable exploitation of urban and rural young people. I was struck by the role of the priests attached to the movement in the renewal of a Church so alienated from the people and so close to the social elites and oligarchies. They were active in all fields: social, liturgical, pastoral, biblical. Many of those priests belonged to religious orders and quite a few of them had studied in Europe."<br /><br />"That contact with Latin America was what made me begin, in 1958, a socio-religious study about the continent as a whole, with teams in each country, several times with members of JOC. It ended in 1962 and was published in some forty volumes, which led the Latin American Bishops' Conference to ask me for a synthesis in three languages to distribute at the entrance to the Second Vatican Council to all the bishops and to be with them as a <i>peritus</i> during the 4 years of conciliar work."<br /><br />"Meanwhile Cardinal Cardijn had asked me if I would agree to be the international chaplain of the movement, which obviously interested me a lot, but my bishop, Cardinal Van Roey didn't approve this idea."<br /><br />"Then, having worked in Asia during vacations at the University of Louvain, where I was teaching Sociology of Religion, I also got in touch with JOC in Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines. With my colleague, Geneviève Lemercinier, we took charge of a training seminar on social analysis for JOC activists in Hong Kong. In South Africa, in the middle of the apartheid era, I participated for 3 days in a national meeting with young white, black, and mixed race workers, which was prohibited in principle, in a convent of the Oblate Fathers in Bloemfontein."<br /><br />"Everywhere in Latin America, Asia and Africa, I met in the following years with former members of JOC, both in trade unions and in development NGOs, or in progressive and also revolutionary political parties, like in Nicaragua or Bolivia."<br /><br />"The lessons I've learned from JOC have been numerous and fundamental. First was knowledge of the working world, its struggles, its organizations. Then the method -- seeing, judging, acting -- which gives a very effective reflection framework for the analysis of realities and for the implementation of an action that is adapted to them. If I studied Sociology and if I continued the research work constantly, it was to refine the "seeing" in very different and complex societies. This also allowed me to discover that society could be read from above, but also from below, and that the Gospel option was to read the world with the eyes of the poor and oppressed. There is no neutral science, especially within the framework of the human sciences."<br /><br />"The pedagogy of JOC and its adaptation to a specific environment of young workers, often hardly literate, has taught me to use simple language, to correctly structure the reasoning so that it is understood -- in a word, to get off the academic pedestal and also learn from those who have practical knowledge that is often despised by so-called 'wisdom'."<br /><br />"Finally, it's also JOC that has led me to delve deeper into the social dimension of the Gospel, and to understand that what the Lord asks for is love in practice. It's not just about a personal attitude, but this love implies building a just society and following the example of Jesus in his society, where he proclaimed the values of the Kingdom of God -- love of neighbor, justice, equality, mercy, peace -- and fought all the oppressive economic, social, political and even religious powers. Not in vain did he die (executed) on the cross."(Quito, 01.03.16)<br /><br /><b>His passing</b><br /><br />Nidia Arrobo Rodas, who worked with François at the <a href="http://www.fundacionpuebloindio.org/index.php">Fundación Pueblo Indio del Ecuador</a> [Ecuador Indigenous People's Federation], tells of his final moments: <br /><br />"Our dear François went as he lived, with total serenity, whole, lucid, diaphanous, on his feet...The night before, after an Act of Denunciation at IAEN (Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales) about the Tamil genocide, we ate supper as usual, the "soup" he liked so much, and for him it was vital to have it in communion in our mini-residence at nightfall and, as usual, he went off to sleep...Of course he kept working in his room...We don't know until what time...Because even at eleven at night we were still receiving his emails."<br /><br />"At dawn, we guess he got up to go to the shower and his strength failed him...He had gotten out of bed, he had sat down in his recliner very near his bed, and with his hand on his heart he stayed sleeping in the deepest sleep of his life, very placidly, without making any noise, very quiet...A massive heart attack...At half past seven in the morning...he awoke in God."<br /><br />"Precisely in April we had gone to the cardiologist, at my request, because he was feeling very agitated and like he was lacking oxygen...The cardiologist asked him to have surgery on his coronary artery because it had narrowed and the pacemaker was no longer responding as it had when it was put in four years ago. He said: François, the surgery is imminent...He chose to have it in Belgium at the suggestion of the cardiologist himself...But as much as he insisted, he didn't make the decision to travel right away: 'I have many commitments, I have to end the Houtart professorship in June and then I'll go," he told me. Again I told him it was a long time to wait...But he was the absolute master of his will and his decisions...He chose to finish everything he had planned here and travel to Belgium in June for his surgery which, as he would say sportingly, was a very small thing."<br /><br />"With this, he had tickets bought and bags ready, to travel yesterday (June 9), but first to Bogotá, then a week in Cuba, then a week in Brazil and arrive at the end of June in his Belgium ..."<br /><br />"I knew he chose freely to live with us, he felt happy, he was happy...and I think that deep in his heart he wanted to end his days right here."<br /><br />"The final celebration took place -- at my request -- in IAEN, that &nbsp;Wednesday, exactly at five in the afternoon, the day and time he was to have ended his professorial program this year."<br /><br />"We are desolate...We were happy with his jovial presence, full of friendship, fineness of spirit, delicacies and incredible details; but at the same time I know he was happy in our midst...He always said so and this fills me with joy and gratitude."<br /><br />"Nonetheless we feel he is among us, he is alive, goes on, and will go on living and resurrected in the liberation struggles of all the impoverished all over the world, and in the birth pangs with which the INDIGENOUS PEOPLES and our Pachamama moan."<br /><br />"As is noted in his will, we cremated him...and as soon as possible his ashes will rest with those of his mother in his native Belgium."<br /><br /><b>Miguel D’Escoto</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4LJmvjLtkcQ/WUWJGV7zUSI/AAAAAAAALHM/M3cTQdtiQV0SEtYf_Hgdr63FCSLpCKUmACLcBGAs/s1600/Betto-Descoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="470" height="174" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4LJmvjLtkcQ/WUWJGV7zUSI/AAAAAAAALHM/M3cTQdtiQV0SEtYf_Hgdr63FCSLpCKUmACLcBGAs/s200/Betto-Descoto.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Two days after Houtart left us, I lost another friend, also a priest and a revolutionary like him, Father Miguel D'Escoto, dead at 84 years. Minister of Foreign Relations of Sandinista Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, he presided the UN General Assembly in 2008 and 2009.<br /><br />A diplomat's son, D'Escoto was born in Los Angeles in 1933. He became a priest through the Maryknoll order and was one of the founders of the New York publisher Orbis Books that in 1977 in the United States published my book <i>Cartas da prisão</i> under the title <i>Against principalities and powers</i>.<br /><br />It was D'Escoto who received Lula and me in Managua on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in July 1979. He took us to the house of Sergio Ramirez, then vice-president of the country, the night of July 19, when we then met and talked at length with Fidel Castro.<br /><br />In January 1980, he came to São Paulo in the company of Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, to participate in the first world congress on Liberation Theology. He was one of the Sandinista Night speakers at TUCA, the theater of the Catholic University of São Paulo.<br /><br />On Sunday November 29, 1981, in Managua, we met again in his house which belonged to the executive who presided over the Nicaraguan Central Bank at the time of the Somoza dictatorship. Daniel Ortega, the Secretary-General of the Sandinista National Liberation Front René Nuñez, Fathers Gustavo Gutiérrez, Pablo Richard, Fernando Cardenal, Uriel Molina, and the Social Welfare minister, Father Edgard Parrales, were there.<br /><br />D'Escoto had just come back from Mexico and he described in detail the recent conversations about Central America between President López Portillo and General Alexander Haig, US Secretary of State. In the minds of the guests, an undisguised satisfaction at the efficiency of Sandinista espionage within the Mexican government.<br /><br />We talked about the circumstances of the Church, the international campaign against the Revolution and the Sandinista Youth, now under the care of Fernando Cardenal. I was worried about the mechanistic nature of the Marxism that had spread among the Sandinista youth, mere apologetics from old Russian manuals. I stressed the importance of the priests in power -- D'Escoto, Parrales and the Cardenal brothers -- publicly explaining their life of faith. I feared they would project a more political than Christian image.<br /><br />On Saturday November 16, 1984, in Managua, I returned to D'Escoto's house. I asked him why he hadn't gone to the OAS meeting in Brasília. "In order not to give credit to the OAS," he answered, "which continues to serve as a tool in the hands of the United States against the sovereignty of the people of Central America."<br /><br />We celebrated the Eucharist under the wicker porch in the backyard. We read and meditated on the Gospel of Matthew 4:25 ff. D'Escoto blurted out: "My body and mind are tired, because they no longer follow the fast pace that circumstances impose on me. I dream of enjoying solitude, taking time for myself and not having to be always on the phone. However, I know that for the moment, this is just a dream. From my intimacy with Jesus, I take the strength that sustains me."<br /><br />At the end of the celebration, he said to me: "I want two things from you: I am reading with great pleasure Dom Pedro Casaldáliga's latest book. I know he'll be going to Spain soon. Ask him to come through Nicaragua first. And ask Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns to come to Daniel [Ortega]'s inauguration next January 10th."<br /><br />"Why don't you call Dom Paulo now?," I suggested.<br /><br />We tried but the cardinal of São Paulo wasn't home.<br /><br />Eleven days later I personally gave the message to Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns. The following year, Dom Pedro Casaldáliga visited Nicaragua.<br /><br />In March 1986, I met him again in Havana with Rosario Murillo, current vice-president of Nicaragua and wife of Daniel Ortega, and Manuel Piñeiro, head of the Americas Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. We talked at length about the situation in Nicaragua and the explicit support bishops Obando and Vega were giving to Reagan's aggression policy. D'Escoto was of the opinion that the priests, religious, and laity should courageously confront the archbishop of Managua, leaving, if necessary, for ecclesiastical disobedience. The latter led to the suspension by Pope John Paul II of his priestly functions, a measure repealed by Pope Francis.<br /><br />In January 1989, in Havana, we saw each other at the commemoration of the 30 years of the Cuban Revolution. He entertained himself in a long conversation with Leonardo Boff about the theology of the Trinity. "It is the basis of my spirituality," I heard him say. And he lamented the situation of his country: "The hardest thing for the people of Nicaragua isn't American aggression, but the lack of support from the Church."<br /><br />We had other meetings later,such as during the period he presided the UN General Assembly, which led him to disbelieve entirely in the effectiveness of this important institution manipulated by the interests of the White House.<br /><br />With the disappearance of François Houtart and Miguel D'Escoto, the cause of the poor and liberation theology have lost something in Latin America. They have left us a legacy of how to live the Christian faith in a world divided between a few billionaires and multitudes of destitute people, and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in this troubled beginning of the twenty-first century. <br /><br /><i>Frei Betto is a writer, author of <b><a href="https://www.rocco.com.br/livro/?cod=2640">Paraíso perdido – viagens ao mundo socialista</a></b> (Rocco) among other books. Photos: Frei Betto with&nbsp;François Houtart (top) and Miguel D'Escoto (bottom).</i>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-23948977150503538182017-06-14T20:42:00.002-04:002017-06-14T20:44:07.608-04:00Teresa Forcades: "I left Harvard University for the convent"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bbf1R8BB6Sk/WUHXdDR8BPI/AAAAAAAALGs/6fNRr4niUPQH1q1ns3QsSvlDky4404HMQCLcBGAs/s1600/Forcades-wowprotest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1180" data-original-width="990" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bbf1R8BB6Sk/WUHXdDR8BPI/AAAAAAAALGs/6fNRr4niUPQH1q1ns3QsSvlDky4404HMQCLcBGAs/s200/Forcades-wowprotest.jpg" width="168" /></a></div>by Antonio Gnoli (English translation of this e-mail interview by Rebel Girl)<br /><a href="http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2017/06/12/news/teresa_forcades-167871078/">La Repubblica</a> <i>(in italiano)</i><br />June 12, 2017<br /><br />It isn't easy to imagine what a nun's life might be without thinking of the condition in a certain sense of exclusion in which it is mostly poured out. So when I first met Teresa Forcades and heard her speak not of God but of men and women, not of souls but of bodies, not about abstinence but about sexuality, I felt disconcerting wonder. It was as if an actually loving conscience were hiding in the cycle of religious words. Teresa Forcades is a Benedictine nun of Catalan origin. She is just over fifty years old and observes the rules of the cloister, with some room devoted to socializing. She is a doctor (she studied in the United States), a theologian (Ph.D. in Barcelona and Berlin), she is interested in psychoanalysis and feminism. <br /><br /><b>How did you move from medicine to theology?</b><br /><br />"I would have willingly served as the medical officer in any small village in Catalonia, where there's greater contact with people. But when I finished university, I felt a need for recollection. For about a year, I retreated alone in a country house."<br /><br /><b>How did you spend the day?</b><br /><br />"The hours were marked by a simple order: eating, sleeping, meditating. I had the <i>Spiritual Exercises</i> of Ignatius of Loyola with me. But I wasn't ready for a different life. I was young, still eager to deepen the study of medicine. I was preparing for admission to an American university. I was accepted and spent a certain time in a hospital in Buffalo. It seemed like a secure career but fate had other things in store."<br /><br /><b>What?</b><br /><br />"I met Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a Roman Catholic theologian and feminist, naturalized American. She was the one who drew me to theology and feminism. But it was difficult to keep the hospital together with new interests. I had also applied to Harvard and the university had accepted my resume. I found myself in a complicated situation: I didn't want to give up my theology studies."<br /><br /><b>Did you have to choose between the Church and the University?</b><br /><br />"More precisely between a final interview that would have then allowed me to get into the best hospitals or..."<br /><br /><b>Or?</b><br /><br />"In that period -- it was 1995 -- I returned briefly to Spain, to the monastery of Montserrat. I was confused and restless. But that place felt familiar to me." <br /><br /><b>Was it a Benedictine monastery?</b><br /><br />"For cloistered nuns. I spent a few weeks in prayer. One day, I was summoned by the abbess who told me she knew about my past as a doctor, especially as an infectious disease expert. She asked if I could explain to her and her sisters what the AIDS virus, which in those years claimed many victims, was. We organized the meeting on an afternoon during which I also wanted to talk about homosexuality and how in people's minds the wrong message was being passed that the illness was to be attributed to the sin of being gay."<br /><br /><b>How did the nuns react?</b><br /><br />"To my great amazement, very well. There were many questions and the discussion continued during dinner. It seemed to me that I had found my world. The next day, I expressed to the abbess my intention to enter the convent. She started to laugh. She wasn't expecting it. I was convinced that I preferred Montserrat to Harvard. She tried to curb my enthusiasm. She advised me to go to Harvard and, if after the two-year scholarship, I still felt the "call," we would talk about it again. Time didn't affect that decision. In fact, I took the vows in 1997."<br /><br /><b>And how did your parents react?</b><br /><br />"My father was incredulous, my mother very angry. Only my sister firmly supported the decision. As for my friends, almost everyone thought I was crazy. Leaving the prospect of Harvard for the convent was an inconceivable choice."<br /><br /><b>Is yours a bourgeois family?</b><br /><br />No. My father was a salesman and my mother, a nurse. They separated when I was eleven years old. I was the first of three sisters. One day, my father, while accompanying us to school, told us that he had fallen in love with another woman."<br /><br /><b>How did you take it?</b><br /><br />"I kept silent. It was a strange reaction. It seemed like a huge gesture to me but at the time I feared for him."<br /><br /><b>What year was it?</b><br /><br />"It was 1977. The caudillo Franco had died a couple of years earlier, after a very long agony. Spain seemed like an immobile country. Isolated from everything. I remember that when I went to Paris in 1978 with my sisters and my mother, I felt a sense of freedom and was moved by everything I saw there."<br /><br /><b>Do you have any memory of the Franco dictatorship?</b><br /><br />"As Catalans, my people were not in favor of the regime. In the family, the story of my two grandfathers circulated. The paternal one had fought for the Left. The maternal one was a doctor and during the civil war he was arrested by the Republicans. He didn't have Franquist sentiments, but the fact that he was one of the authorities in the country convinced the "reds" that grandfather was an enemy of the people and as such he was to be shot."<br /><br /><b>Was he executed?</b><br /><br />"My grandmother wept and begged the commander. She handed over the family jewels and said she was expecting a child (she was pregnant with my mother) and that if the father were shot nobody could take care of their livelihood. This was to save his life."<br /><br /><b>How did you experience your role as a novice?</b><br /><br />"At the beginning there was enthusiasm. Then the doubts began, accompanied by a feeling of oppression, boredom, a lack of perspective."<br /><br /><b>Were you realizing the difficulty of those vows?</b><br /><br />"I felt the comfort of prayer and the simplicity of that world, governed by a harmonious silence. And yet I seemed to sink into despair. It was as if I didn't have the strength, the conviction, the tenaciousness to sustain that choice. I wondered if God would help me. I saw happy people around me and in contrast, I experienced a sense of deep uneasiness."<br /><br /><b>Did you know what was wrong?</b><br /><br />"I didn't get any cultural stimulus around me. I had been around the world and discussed with the most open minds, learned languages. Suddenly I found myself in a kind of dead calm."<br /><br /><b>Did you doubt your vocation?</b><br /><br />"I was in crisis. I had not yet taken the vows. It happened at that time that I fell in love with a young doctor. It was a test of my true feelings. I had to choose between God and the world. It was at that point that I felt the strong need to become a nun."<br /><br /><b>What does it mean to be called? I'm asking you because maybe in that "voice that's calling" there might be suggestion, misunderstanding, self-projection, with the use of weapons and murder.</b><br /><br />"There can be all that; only time determines the degree of authenticity of that voice."<br /><br /><b>Don't you feel the weight of exclusion?</b><br /><br />"On the contrary, I feel at the center of everything I do." <b>What do you mean by centrality?</b><br /><br />"I don't mean domination or control of an environment. I'm thinking rather of radicalism without dogma. Every time you search for a center, you're looking for a void."<br /><br /><b>Doesn't it risk being an illusion?</b><br /><br />"I imagine the center not as a principle of stability but of rupture."<br /><br /><b>Perhaps both are needed.</b><br /><br />"Stability and rupture can also alternate. Like order and disorder. History teaches it. But I think my life is resting in an invisible center that can not be defined. And that's why I would call it a mystical experience."<br /><br /><b>I read in your <i><a href="http://www.castelvecchieditore.com/siamo-tutti-diversi/">Siamo tutti diversi!</a></i> ("We Are All Diverse!", published by Castelvecchi) that you connect the experience of a void back to Lacan's thought.</b><br /><br />"It might be surprising that a nun reads Lacan and draws any useful hint from his thought. I've been dealing with psychoanalysis and in particular the notion of the 'unconscious subject'. Freud argues that the inner authenticity of a person has been repressed."<br /><br /><b>That can thus be liberated?</b><br /><br />"It's the role that psychoanalysis should play. We're talking about a modern ideal -- liberating man's strengths! From the moment he substituted himself for God, man has developed an infinite desire for himself. In theory, he thinks he can do everything."<br /><br /><b>And in parctice?</b><br /><br />"Society, the State, the Church are the institutions that oppress him. So the subject finds that he has no authentic interiority. That's why Lacan says that interiority is a void and that this void can be represented as the subject's death."<br /><br /><b>Does the subject's death come after the death of God?</b><br /><br />"There would not be that without this."<br /><br /><b>Yet we want to become authentic people.</b><br /><br />"In the worldly horizon, our identity comes from outside -- like desires are, it is induced. In childhood, it comes from the relationship with the mother. We think that our authenticity results from this original relationship, but this isn't so. The mother passes away and we seek a new identity that we will find in something else or some other situation. This is what drives Lacan to say that there is no authenticity in us. We are only inhabited by a void."<br /><br /><b>Is desire also a form of void?</b><br /><br />"The desire that takes place in the void is precisely what I call mysticism. But it's an undetermined desire."<br /><br /><b>Desire always arises as a form of absence.</b><br /><br />"But it is almost always caused by what is missing from outside -- a pair of brand name pants, an elegant jacket, a custom-built car. I don't mean desire in that sense. Augustine went so far as to say that everyone desires God, but not everyone gives the same name to [that desire]."<br /><br /><b>What does it mean to desire God in the era of His death?</b><br /><br />"For me it means defending the truth."<br /><br /><b>Everyone argues, religiously, that they want to defend it, even with the use of weapons and murder.</b><br /><br />"That's not the truth; it's just fanaticism. On the other hand, truth can't be a relative concept, so each one has his own good truth ready to use."<br /><br /><b>So?</b><br /><br />"The truth for me is all that it is not. But the point is that one must argue that "is not" every time." <b>Don't you feel privileged?</b><br /><br />"In what sense?"<br /><br /><b>I'm thinking of the simplicity of your sisters, the fact that they don't own or use sophisticated instruments, that they don't deal with philosophy and homosexuality, that they respect the cloister.</b><br /><br />"I'm very envious of the sisters who live in their cloister permanently. I wouldn't talk of privilege, but of a disposition to complete an action. As for the cloister, after the Council of Trent, the partial one was introduced. The monastery community decided on the dispensation, how to apply it and when to revoke it."<br /><br /><b>How is your life in the monastery?</b><br /><br />"It's divided into equal proportions between work and prayer."<br /><b><br /></b><b>What do you mean by work?</b><br /><br />"I mainly engage in intellectual activity -- I translate, write articles, teach. This year my lesson is divided into two parts: the need of the soul, which is inspired by Simone Weil's book <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Need_for_Roots">The Need for Roots</a></i>, and feminist theology in history."<br /><br /><b>You've talked about "queer theology." What does that mean?</b><br /><br />"Queer is a term that started to circulate in the nineties. It can mean 'crossing', 'passage', 'transition'. Then it took on the meaning of bizarre, strange, extravagant."<br /><br /><b>It has been brought back to the transgender universe.</b><br /><br />"That's true and it's a possible variation. What I mean is dealing with a theology out of the pre-established schemes. Theology is not the conceptual defense of God's existence, which could create many misconceptions. No. It's a form of co-creation."<br /><br /><b>Meaning?</b><br /><br />"I think God didn't just create the world and us in seven days. Co-creation means that we continue to do his work with other tools."<br /><br /><b>But we aren't perfect.</b><br /><br />"Creating is also risk-taking. Without risk, says Weil, there is no freedom. God has created unique pieces. It is up to us to continue to be so."<br /><br /><b>For you, does that mean being a nun?</b><br /><br />"It means that too."<br /><br /><b>You could be approaching heretical thinking.</b><br /><br />"I have never been indoctrinated in conservative Christianity. Each passing day we should be willing to learn something new."<br /><br /><b>Don't you fear excommunication?</b><br /><br />"I'm prepared, I don't fear it. Excommunication has been the worst thing of Catholicism. Equal to the Greeks' ostracism."<br /><br /><b>Are you happy?</b><br /><br />"I am every time I go back to the monastery. Every time I do something that helps to change things. Augustine has said, 'God created us without us, but he did not will to save us without us.' Happiness is also this awareness of our being human for and with others." Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7691818617778722233.post-63634069518756902912017-06-13T10:16:00.000-04:002017-06-13T10:16:41.644-04:00Film: "Teología de la Liberación. La Iglesia de los Pobres en el siglo XXI"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hmsTxRE2cns/WT_ympU38UI/AAAAAAAALGM/EGT2WcG83egNWaA9IHL8aYaDH39-zwBPACLcB/s1600/TV2screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="320" height="113" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hmsTxRE2cns/WT_ympU38UI/AAAAAAAALGM/EGT2WcG83egNWaA9IHL8aYaDH39-zwBPACLcB/s200/TV2screenshot.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>With the deaths this month of two great figures in liberation theology -- <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Padre-Miguel-dEscoto---Nicaraguas-Chancellor-of-Peace-and-Dignity-20170610-0001.html">Maryknoll Fr. Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann</a> and <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Prominent-Belgian-Liberation-Theologist-Francois-Houtart-Dies--20170606-0020.html">Belgian priest and sociologist François Houtart</a> -- one becomes aware of the gradual dwindling of the first generation of this movement that is now enjoying a revival under Pope Francis.<br /><br />So it is not surprising that there is a renewed interest in this 2014 documentary about liberation theology that Madrid born filmmaker <a href="http://hoycinema.abc.es/perfil-cine/andres-luque-perez-125597/biografia.html">Andrés Luque Pérez</a> made for Spain's TV2.<br /><br />Filmed mainly in Brazil, Peru, and El Salvador, the documentary provides an excellent introduction to the subject of liberation theology, including much historical footage such as John Paul II's public reprimand of Ernesto Cardenal and scenes from Archbishop Oscar Romero's death. <br /><br />After a broad historical retrospective on liberation theology, the film moves to segments on the key sub-issues that theology addresses: the poor, the environment, landless peasants, indigenous populations, women, globalization. One can't help but wish the film had been made a little later when surely there would have been material on Pope Francis and an added segment on migrants and refugees.<br /><br />The film features many of the great figures of liberation theology including Jon Sobrino, Leonardo Boff, Sergio Torres, Gustavo Gutierrez, Rafael de Sivate, Ignacio Ellacuria, Pedro Casaldáliga, Pablo López Blanco, Fray Betto, Leonardo Lego, and Juan José Tamayo. As one watches it, it's impossible not to feel nostalgic knowing that some like Ignacio Ellacuria are no longer among us, and others like Pedro Casaldáliga are still alive but too disabled by illness to participate in such a project today. One is thankful that Pérez has captured and compiled their testimony.<br /><br />Watch the film (approx. 44 min, in Spanish/en Español):<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IPLEjVJx6-4" width="420"></iframe>Rebel Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07705855840016468399noreply@blogger.com0